Chapter XXI: Act 1856: , is mainly declaratory of the English common law, as embodied (14)

In 1803 Gurgaon district passed into the hands of the British after Lord Lake's conquests. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in May 1857, the nawab of Farukhnagar, the principal feudatory of the district, rose in rebellion. The Meos and many Rajput families followed his example. A faithful native officer preserved the public buildings and records at Rewari from destruction; but with this exception, British authority became extinguished for a time throughout Gurgaon. After the fall of the rebel capital, a force marched into the district and either captured or dispersed the leaders of rebellion. The territory of the nawab was confiscated on account of his participation in the Mutiny. Civil administration was resumed under orders from the Punjab government, to which province the district was formally annexed on the final pacification of the country. The population in 1901 was 746,208, showing an increase of 11% in the decade. The largest town and chief trade centre is Rewari. The district is now traversed by several lines of railway, and irrigation is provided by the Agra canal. The chief trade is in cereals, but hardware is also exported.

GURKHA (pronounced _goorka_; from Sans. _gau_, a cow, and _raks_, to protect), the ruling Hindu race in Nepal (q.v.). The Gurkhas, or Gurkhalis, claim descent from the rajas of Chitor in Rajputana. When driven out of their own country by the Mahommedan invasion, they took refuge in the hilly districts about Kumaon, whence they gradually invaded the country to the eastward as far as Gurkha, Noakote and ultimately to the valley of Nepal and even Sikkim. They were stopped by the English in an attempt to push south, and the treaty of Segauli, which ended the Gurkha War of 1814, definitely limited their territorial growth. The Gurkhas of the present day remain Hindus by religion, but show in their appearance a strong admixture of Mongolian blood. They make splendid infantry soldiers, and by agreement with their government about 20,000 have been recruited for the Gurkha regiments of the Indian army. As a rule they are bold, enduring, faithful, frank, independent and self-reliant. They despise other Orientals, but admire and fraternize with Europeans, whose tastes in sport and war they share. They strongly resemble the Japanese, but are of a sturdier build. Their national weapon is the _kukri_, a heavy curved knife, which they use for every possible purpose.

See Capt. Eden Vansittart, _Notes on the Gurkhas_ (1898); and P. D.
Bonarjee, _The Fighting Races of India_ (1899).

GURNALL, WILLIAM (1617-1679), English author, was born in 1617 at King's Lynn, Norfolk. He was educated at the free grammar school of his native town, and in 1631 was nominated to the Lynn scholarship in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1635 and M.A. in 1639. He was made rector of Lavenham in Suffolk in 1644; and before he received that appointment he seems to have officiated, perhaps as curate, at Sudbury. At the Restoration he signed the declaration required by the Act of Uniformity, and on this account he was the subject of a libellous attack, published in 1665, entitled _Covenant-Renouncers Desperate Apostates_. He died on the 12th of October 1679. Gurnall is known by his _Christian in Complete Armour_, published in three volumes, dated 1655, 1658 and 1662. It consists of a series of sermons on the latter portion of the 6th chapter of Ephesians, and is described as a "magazine from whence the Christian is furnished with spiritual arms for the battle, helped on with his armour, and taught the use of his weapon; together with the happy issue of the whole war." The work is more practical than theological; and its quaint fancy, graphic and pointed style, and its fervent religious tone render it still popular with some readers.

See also _An Inquiry into the Life of the Rev. W. Gurnall_, by H.
M'Keon (1830), and a biographical introduction by Bishop Ryle to the
_Christian in Complete Armour_ (1865).

GURNARD (_Trigla_), a genus of fishes forming a group of the family of "mailed cheeks" (_Triglidae_), and easily recognized by three detached finger-like appendages in front of the pectoral fins, and by their large, angular, bony head, the sides of which are protected by strong, hard and rough bones. The pectoral appendages are provided with strong nerves, and serve not only as organs of locomotion when the fish moves on the bottom, but also as organs of touch, by which it detects small animals on which it feeds. Gurnards are coast-fishes, generally distributed over the tropical and temperate areas; of the forty species known six occur on the coast of Great Britain, viz. the red gurnard (_T. pini_), the streaked gurnard (_T. lineata_), the sapphirine gurnard (_T. hirundo_), the grey gurnard (_T. gurnardus_), the piper (_T. lyra_) and the long-finned gurnard (_T. obscura_ or _T. lucerna_). Although never found very far from the coast, gurnards descend to depths of several hundred fathoms; and as they are bottom-fish they are caught chiefly by means of the trawl. Not rarely, however, they may be seen floating on the surface of the water, with their broad, finely coloured pectoral fins spread out like fans. In very young fishes, which abound in certain localities on the coast in the months of August and September, the pectorals are comparatively much longer than in the adult, extending to the end of the body; they are beautifully coloured and kept expanded, the little fishes looking like butterflies. When caught and taken out of the water, gurnards emit a grunting noise, which is produced by the vibrations of a diaphragm situated transversely across the cavity of the bladder and perforated in the centre. This grunting noise gave rise to the name "gurnard," which is probably an adaptation or variation of the Fr. _grognard_, grumbler, cf. the Fr. _grondin_, gurnard, from _gronder_, and Ger. _Knurrfisch_. Their flesh is very white, firm and wholesome.

GURNEY, the name of a philanthropic English family of bankers and merchants, direct descendants of Hugh de Gournay, lord of Gournay, one of the Norman noblemen who accompanied William the Conqueror to England. Large grants of land were made to Hugh de Gournay in Norfolk and Suffolk, and Norwich has since that time been the headquarters of the family, the majority of whom were Quakers. Here in 1770 the brothers John and Henry Gurney founded a banking-house, the business passing in 1779 to Henry's son, Bartlett Gurney. On the death of Bartlett Gurney in 1802 the bank became the property of his three cousins, of whom JOHN GURNEY (1750-1809) was the most remarkable. One of his daughters was Elizabeth Fry; another married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Of his sons one was Joseph JOHN GURNEY (1788-1847), a well-known philanthropist of the day; another, SAMUEL GURNEY (1786-1856) assumed on his father's death the control of the Norwich bank. Samuel Gurney also took over about the same time the control of the London bill-broking business of Richardson, Overend & Company, in which he was already a partner. This business had been founded in 1800 by Thomas Richardson, clerk to a London bill-discounter, and John Overend, chief clerk in the bank of Smith, Payne & Company at Nottingham, the Gurneys supplying the capital. At that time bill-discounting was carried on in a spasmodic fashion by the ordinary merchant in addition to his regular business, but Richardson considered that there was room for a London house which should devote itself entirely to the trade in bills. This, at that time, novel idea proved an instant success. The title of the firm was subsequently changed to Overend, Gurney & Company, and for forty years it was the greatest discounting-house in the world. During the financial crisis of 1825 Overend, Gurney & Company were able to make short loans to many other bankers. The house indeed became known as "the bankers' banker," and secured many of the previous clients of the Bank of England. Samuel Gurney died in 1856. He was a man of very charitable disposition, and during the latter years of his life charitable and philanthropic undertakings almost monopolized his attention. In 1865 the business of Overend, Gurney & Company, which had come under less competent control, was converted into a joint stock company, but in 1866 the firm suspended payment with liabilities amounting to eleven millions sterling.

GURNEY, EDMUND (1847-1888), English psychologist, was born at Hersham, near Walton-on-Thames, on the 23rd of March 1847. He was educated at Blackheath and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a high place in the classical tripos and obtained a fellowship. His work for the schools was done, says his friend F. W. H. Myers, "in the intervals of his practice on the piano." Dissatisfied with his own executive skill as a musician, he wrote _The Power of Sound_ (1880), an essay on the philosophy of music. He then studied medicine with no intention of practising, devoting himself to physics, chemistry and physiology. In 1880 he passed the second M.B. Cambridge examination in the science of the healing profession. These studies, and his great logical powers and patience in the investigation of evidence, he devoted to that outlying field of psychology which is called "Psychical Research." He asked whether, as universal tradition declares, there is an unexplored region of human faculty transcending the normal limitations of sensible knowledge. That there is such a region it was part of the system of Hegel to declare, and the subject had been metaphysically treated by Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Du Prel, Hamilton and others, as the philosophy of the Unconscious or Subconscious. But Gurney's purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotic field, whereas vague and ill-attested anecdotes had hitherto been the staple of the evidence of metaphysicians. The tendency of his mind was to investigate whatever facts may give a colour of truth to the ancient belief in the persistence of the conscious human personality after the death of the body. Like Joseph Glanvill's, the natural bent of Gurney's mind was sceptical. Both thought the current and traditional reports of supernormal occurrences suggestive and worth investigating by the ordinary methods of scientific observation, and inquisition into evidence at first hand. But the method of Gurney was, of course, much more strict than that of the author of _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, and it included hypnotic and other experiments unknown to Glanvill. Gurney began at what he later saw was the wrong end by studying, with Myers, the "seances" of professed spiritualistic "mediums" (1874-1878). Little but detection of imposture came of this, but an impression was left that the subject ought not to be abandoned. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. (See PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.) Paid mediums were discarded, at least for the time, and experiments were made in "thought-transference" and hypnotism. Personal evidence as to uninduced hallucinations was also collected. The first results are embodied in the volumes of _Phantasms of the Living_, a vast collection (Podmore, Myers and Gurney), and in Gurney's remarkable essay, _Hallucinations_. The chief consequence was to furnish evidence for the process called "telepathy," involving the provisional hypothesis that one human mind can affect another through no recognized channel of sense. The fact was supposed to be established by the experiments chronicled in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, and it was argued that similar experiences occurred spontaneously, as, for example, in the many recorded instances of "deathbed wraiths" among civilized and savage races. (Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i. chapter xi., especially pp. 449-450, 1873. Lang, _Making of Religion_, pp. 120-124, 1898.) The dying man is supposed to convey the hallucination of his presence as one living person experimentally conveys his thought to another, by "thought-transference." Gurney's hypnotic experiments, marked by great exactness, patience and ingenuity, were undertaken in 1885-1888. Their tendency was, in Myers's words, "to prove--so far as any one operator's experience in this protean subject can be held to prove anything--that there is sometimes, in the induction of hypnotic phenomena, some agency at work which is neither ordinary nervous stimulation (monotonous or sudden) nor suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject's mind." These results, if accepted, of course corroborate the idea of telepathy. (See Gurney, "Hypnotism and Telepathy," _Proceedings S. P. R._ vol. iv.) Experiments by MM. Gibert, Janet, Richet, Hericourt and others are cited as tending in the same direction. Other experiments dealt with "the relation of the memory in the hypnotic state to the memory in another hypnotic state, and of both to the normal or waking memory." The result of Gurney's labours, cut short by his early death, was to raise and strengthen the presumption that there exists an unexplored region of human faculty which ought not to be neglected by science as if the belief in it were a mere survival of savage superstition. Rather, it appears to have furnished the experiences which, misinterpreted, are expressed in traditional beliefs. That Gurney was credulous and easily imposed upon those who knew him, and knew his penetrating humour, cannot admit; nor is the theory likely to be maintained by those whom bias does not prevent from studying with care his writings. In controversy "he delighted in replying with easy courtesy to attacks envenomed with that _odium plus quam theologicum_ which the very allusion to a ghost or the human soul seems in some philosophers to inspire." In discussion of themes unpopular and obscure Gurney displayed the highest tact, patience, good temper, humour and acuteness. There never was a more disinterested student. In addition to his work on music and his psychological writings, he was the author of _Tertium Quid_ (1887), a collection of essays, on the whole a protest against one-sided ideas and methods of discussion. He died at Brighton on 23rd June 1888, from the effects of an overdose of narcotic medicine. (A. L.)

GURWOOD, JOHN (1790-1845), British soldier, began his career in a merchant's office, but soon obtained an ensigncy in the 52nd (1808). With his regiment he served in the "Light Division" of Wellington's army throughout the earlier Peninsular campaigns, and at Ciudad Rodrigo (19th Jan. 1812) he led one of the forlorn hopes and was severely wounded. For his gallant conduct on this occasion Wellington presented Gurwood with the sword of the French governor of Ciudad Rodrigo. A little later, transferring to the 9th Light Dragoons, he was made brigade-major to the Guards' cavalry which had just arrived in the Peninsula. In the latter part of the war he served as brigade-major to Lambert's brigade of the sixth infantry division, and was present at the various actions in which that division played a conspicuous part--the Nivelle, the Nive, Orthes and Toulouse. At Waterloo Captain Gurwood was for the third time severely wounded. In the first twelve years of the peace he was promoted up to the grade of lieut.-colonel, and in 1841 became brevet-colonel. He was for many years the duke of Wellington's private secretary, and was entrusted by him with the collection and editing of the _Wellington Despatches_, which occupied Gurwood from 1837 to the end of his life. This work is a monument of industrious skill, and earned its author a Civil List Pension of L200. But overwork and the effects of his wounds had broken his health, and he committed suicide on Christmas day 1845. He was a C.B. and deputy-lieutenant of the Tower.

GUSLA, or GUSLI, an ancient stringed instrument still in use among the Slavonic races. The modern Servian gusla is a kind of tanbur (see Pandura), consisting of a round, concave body covered with a parchment soundboard; there is but one horse-hair string, and the peg for tuning it is inserted in oriental fashion in the back of the head. The gusla is played with a primitive bow called _goudalo_. The _gouslars_ or blind bards of Servia and Croatia use it to accompany their chants. C. G. Anton[1] mentions an instrument of that name in the shape of a half-moon strung with eighteen strings in use among the Tatars. Prosper Merimee[2] has taken the _gusla_ as the title for a book of Servian poems, which are supposed to have been collected by him among the peasants, but which are thought to have been inspired by the _Viaggio in Dalmazia_ of Albarto Fortis.

Among the Russians, the gusli is an instrument of a different type, a kind of psaltery having five or more strings stretched across a flat, shallow sound-chest in the shape of a wing. In the gusli the strings, of graduated length, are attached to little nails or pins at one end, and at the other they are wound over a rod having screw attachments for increasing and slackening the tension. There is no bridge to determine the vibrating length of the strings. The body of the instrument is shaped roughly like the tail of the grand piano, following the line of the strings; the longest being at the left of the instrument. Matthew Guthrie gives an illustration of the gusli.[3] (K. S.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Erste Linien eines Versuchs uber den Ursprung der alten Slaven_
(Leipzig, 1783-1789), p. 145.

[2] _La Guzla, ou choix de poesies lyriques recueillies dans la
Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie, &c._ (Paris, 1827).

[3] _Dissertations sur les antiquites de Russie_ (St Petersburg,
1795), pl. ii. No. 9, p. 31.

GUSTAVUS I. ERIKSSON (1496-1560), king of Sweden, was born at his mother's estate at Lindholm on Ascension Day 1496. He came of a family which had shone conspicuously in 15th-century politics, though it generally took the anti-national side. His father, Erik Johansson of Rydboholm, "a merry and jocose gentleman," but, like all the Swedish Vasas, liable to sudden fierce gusts of temper, was one of the senators who voted for the deposition of Archbishop Trolle, at the _riksdag_ of 1517 (see SWEDEN, _History_), for which act of patriotism he lost his head. Gustavus's mother, Cecilia Mansdatter, was closely connected by marriage with the great Sture family. Gustavus's youthful experiences impressed him with a life-long distrust of everything Danish. In his eighteenth year he was sent to the court of his cousin Sten Sture. At the battle of Brannkyrka, when Sture defeated Christian II. of Denmark, the young Gustavus bore the governor's standard, and in the same year (1518) he was delivered with five other noble youths as a hostage to King Christian, who treacherously carried him prisoner to Denmark. He was detained for twelve months in the island fortress of Kalo, on the east coast of Jutland, but contrived to escape to Lubeck in September 1519. There he found an asylum till the 20th of May 1520, when he chartered a ship to Kalmar, one of the few Swedish fortresses which held out against Christian II.

It was while hunting near Lake Malar that the news of the Stockholm massacre was brought to him by a peasant fresh from the capital, who told him, at the same time, that a price had been set upon his head. In his extremity, Gustavus saw only one way of deliverance, an appeal for help to the sturdy yeomen of the dales. How the dalesmen set Gustavus on the throne and how he and they finally drove the Danes out of Sweden (1521-1523) is elsewhere recorded (see SWEDEN: _History_). But his worst troubles only began after his coronation on the 6th of June 1523. The financial position of the crown was the most important of all the problems demanding solution, for upon that everything else depended. By releasing his country from the tyranny of Denmark, Gustavus had made the free independent development of Sweden a possibility. It was for him to realize that possibility. First of all, order had to be evolved from the chaos in which Sweden had been plunged by the disruption of the Union; and the shortest, perhaps the only, way thereto was to restore the royal authority, which had been in abeyance during ninety years. But an effective reforming monarchy must stand upon a sound financial basis; and the usual revenues of the crown, always inadequate, were so diminished that they did not cover half the daily expenses of government. New taxes could only be imposed with extreme caution, while the country was still bleeding from the wounds of a long war. And men were wanted even more than money. The lack of capable, trustworthy administrators in Sweden was grievous. The whole burden of government weighed exclusively on the shoulders of the new king, a young man of seven and twenty. Half his time was taken up in travelling from one end of the kingdom to the other, and doing purely clerical work for want of competent assistance. We can form some idea of his difficulties when we learn that, in 1533, he could not send an ambassador to Lubeck because not a single man in his council, except himself, knew German. It was this lack of native talent which compelled Gustavus frequently to employ the services of foreign adventurers like Berent von Mehlen, John von Hoja, Konrad von Pyhy and others.

It was not the least of Gustavus's many anxieties that he had constantly to be on the watch lest a formidable democratic rival should encroach on his prerogative. That rival was the Swedish peasantry. He succeeded indeed in putting down the four formidable rebellions which convulsed the realm from 1525 to 1542, but the consequent strain upon his resources was very damaging, and more than once he was on the point of abdicating and emigrating, out of sheer weariness. Moreover he was in constant fear of the Danes. Necessity compelled him indeed (1534-1536) to take part in _Grevens fejde_ (Counts' War) (see DENMARK, _History_), as the ally of Christian III., but his exaggerated distrust of the Danes was invincible. "We advise and exhort you," he wrote to the governor of Kalmar, "to put no hope or trust in the Danes, or in their sweet scribbling, inasmuch as they mean nothing at all by it except how best they may deceive and betray us Swedes." Such instructions were not calculated to promote confidence between Swedish and Danish negotiators. A fresh cause of dispute was generated in 1548, when Christian III.'s daughter was wedded to Duke Augustus of Saxony. On that occasion, apparently by way of protest against the decree of the diet of Vesteras (15th of January 1544), declaring the Swedish crown hereditary in Gustavus's family, the Danish king caused to be quartered on his daughter's shield not only the three Danish lions and the Norwegian lion with the axe of St Olaf, but also "the three crowns" of Sweden. Gustavus, naturally suspicious, was much perturbed by the innovation, and warned all his border officials to be watchful and prepare for the worst. In 1557 he even wrote to the Danish king protesting against the placing of "the three crowns" in the royal Danish seal beneath the arms of Denmark. Christian III. replied that "the three crowns" signified not Sweden in especial, but the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and that their insertion in the Danish shield was only a reminiscence of the union of Kalmar. But Gustavus was not satisfied, and this was the beginning of "the three crowns" dispute which did so much damage to both kingdoms.

The events which led to the rupture of Gustavus with the Holy See are set forth in the proper place (see SWEDEN: _History_). Here it need only be added that it was a purely political act, as Gustavus, personally, had no strong dogmatic leanings either way. He not unnaturally expressed his amazement when that very juvenile reformer Olavus Petri confidently informed him that the pope was antichrist. He consulted the older and graver Laurentius Andreae, who told him how "Doctor Martinus had clipped the wings of the pope, the cardinals and the big bishops," which could not fail to be pleasing intelligence to a monarch who was never an admirer of episcopacy, while the rich revenues of the church, accumulated in the course of centuries, were a tempting object to the impecunious ruler of an impoverished people. Subsequently, when the Protestant hierarchy was forcibly established in Sweden, matters were much complicated by the absolutist tendencies of Gustavus. The incessant labour, the constant anxiety, which were the daily portion of Gustavus Vasa during the seven and thirty years of his reign, told at last even upon his magnificent constitution. In the spring of 1560, conscious of an ominous decline of his powers, Gustavus summoned his last diet, to give an account of his stewardship. On the 16th of June 1560 the assembly met at Stockholm. Ten days later, supported by his sons, Gustavus greeted the estates in the great hall of the palace, when he took a retrospect of his reign, reminding them of the misery of the kingdom during the union and its deliverance from "that unkind tyrant, King Christian." Four days later the diet passed a resolution confirming the hereditary right of Gustavus's son, Prince Eric, to the throne. The old king's last anxieties were now over and he could die in peace. He expired on the 29th of September 1560.

Gustavus was thrice married. His first wife, Catherine, daughter of Magnus I., duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, bore him in 1533 his eldest son Eric. This union was neither long nor happy, but the blame for its infelicity is generally attributed to the lady, whose abnormal character was reflected and accentuated in her unhappy son. Much more fortunate was Gustavus's second marriage, a year after the death of his first consort, with his own countrywoman, Margaret Lejonhufvud, who bore him five sons and five daughters, of whom three sons, John, Magnus and Charles, and one daughter, Cecilia, survived their childhood. Queen Margaret died in 1551; and a twelvemonth later Gustavus wedded her niece, Catharine Stenbock, a handsome girl of sixteen, who survived him more than sixty years.

Gustavus's outward appearance in the prime of life is thus described by a contemporary: "He was of the middle height, with a round head, light yellow hair, a fine long beard, sharp eyes, a ruddy countenance ... and a body as fitly and well proportioned as any painter could have painted it. He was of a sanguine-choleric temperament, and when untroubled and unvexed, a bright and cheerful gentleman, easy to get on with, and however many people happened to be in the same room with him, he was never at a loss for an answer to every one of them." Learned he was not, but he had naturally bright and clear understanding, an unusually good memory, and a marvellous capacity for taking pains. He was also very devout, and his morals were irreproachable. On the other hand, Gustavus had his full share of the family failings of irritability and suspiciousness, the latter quality becoming almost morbid under the pressure of adverse circumstances. His energy too not infrequently degenerated into violence, and when crossed he was apt to be tyrannical.

See A. Alberg, _Gustavus Vasa and his Times_ (London, 1882); R. N.
Bain, _Scandinavia_, chaps. iii. and v. (Cambridge, 1905); P. B.
Watson, _The Swedish Revolution under Gustavus Vasa_ (London, 1889);
O. Sjogren, _Gustaf Vasa_ (Stockholm, 1896); C. M. Butler, _The
Reformation in Sweden_ (New York, 1883); _Sveriges Historia_
(Stockholm, 1877-1881); J. Weidling, _Schwedische Geschichte im
Zeitalter der Reformation_ (Gotha, 1882). (R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS II. ADOLPHUS (1594-1632), king of Sweden, the eldest son of Charles IX. and of Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein-Gottorp, was born at Stockholm castle on the 9th of December 1594. From the first he was carefully nurtured to be the future prop of Protestantism by his austere parents. Gustavus was well grounded in the classics, and his linguistic accomplishments were extraordinary. He may be said to have grown up with two mother-tongues, Swedish and German; at twelve he had mastered Latin, Italian and Dutch; and he learnt subsequently to express himself in Spanish, Russian and Polish. But his practical father took care that he should grow up a prince, not a pedant. So early as his ninth year he was introduced to public life; at thirteen he received petitions and conversed officially with the foreign ministers; at fifteen he administered his duchy of Vestmanland and opened the Orebro diet with a speech from the throne; indeed from 1610 he may be regarded as his father's co-regent. In all martial and chivalrous accomplishments he was already an adept; and when, a year later, he succeeded to supreme power, his superior ability was as uncontested as it was incontestable.

The first act of the young king was to terminate the fratricidal struggle with Denmark by the peace of Knared (28th of January 1613). Simultaneously, another war, also an heritage from Charles IX., had been proceeding in the far distant regions round lakes Ilmen, Peipus and Ladoga, with Great Novgorod as its centre. It was not, however, like the Danish War, a national danger, but a political speculation meant to be remunerative and compensatory, and was concluded very advantageously for Sweden by the peace of Stolbova on the 27th of February 1617 (see SWEDEN: _History_). By this peace Gustavus succeeded in excluding Muscovy from the Baltic. "I hope to God," he declared to the Stockholm diet in 1617, when he announced the conclusion of peace, "that the Russians will feel it a bit difficult to skip over _that_ little brook." The war with Poland which Gustavus resumed in 1621 was a much more difficult affair. It began with an attack upon Riga as the first step towards conquering Livonia. Riga was invested on the 13th of August and surrendered on the 15th of September; on the 3rd of October Mitau was occupied; but so great were the ravages of sickness during the campaign that the Swedish army had to be reinforced by no fewer than 10,000 men. A truce was thereupon concluded and hostilities were suspended till the summer of 1625, in the course of which Gustavus took Kokenhusen and invaded Lithuania. In January 1626 he attacked the Poles at Walhof and scattered the whole of their army after slaying a fifth part of it. This victory, remarkable besides as Gustavus's first pitched battle, completed the conquest of Livonia. As, however, it became every year more difficult to support an army in the Dvina district, Gustavus now resolved to transfer the war to the Prussian provinces of Poland with a view to securing the control of the Vistula, as he had already secured the control of the Dvina. At the end of 1626, the Swedish fleet, with 14,000 men on board, anchored in front of the chain of sand-dunes which separates the Frische-Haff from the Baltic. Pillau, the only Baltic port then accessible to ships of war, was at once occupied, and Konigsberg shortly afterwards was scared into an unconditional neutrality. July was passed in conquering the bishopric of Ermeland. The surrender of Elbing and Marienburg placed Gustavus in possession of the fertile and easily defensible delta of the Vistula, which he treated as a permanent conquest, making Axel Oxenstjerna its first governor-general. Communications between Danzig and the sea were cut off by the erection of the first of Gustavus's famous entrenched camps at Dirschau. From the end of August 1626 the city was blockaded, and in the meantime Polish irregulars, under the capable Stanislaus Koniecpolski, began to harass the Swedes. But the object of the campaign, a convenient basis of operations, was won; and in October the king departed to Sweden to get reinforcements. He returned in May 1627 with 7000 men, which raised his forces to 14,000, against which Koniecpolski could only oppose 9000. But his superior strategy frustrated all the efforts of the Swedish king, who in the course of the year was twice dangerously wounded and so disabled that he could never wear armour again. Gustavus had made extensive preparations for the ensuing campaign and took the field with 32,000 men. But once again, though far outnumbered, and unsupported by his own government, the Polish grand-hetman proved more than a match for Gustavus, who, on the 10th of September, broke up his camp and returned to Prussia; the whole autumn campaign had proved a failure and cost him 5000 men. During the ensuing campaign of 1629 Gustavus had to contend against the combined forces of Koniecpolski and 10,000 of Wallenstein's mercenaries. The Polish commander now showed the Swedes what he could do with adequate forces. At Stuhm, on the 29th of June, he defeated Gustavus, who lost most of his artillery and narrowly escaped capture. The result of the campaign was the conclusion of the six years' truce of Altmark, which was very advantageous to Sweden.

And now Gustavus turned his attention to Germany. The motives which induced the Swedish king to intervene directly in the Thirty Years' War are told us by himself in his correspondence with Oxenstjerna. Here he says plainly that it was the fear lest the emperor should acquire the Baltic ports and proceed to build up a sea-power dangerous to Scandinavia. For the same reason, the king rejected the chancellor's alternative of waging a simply defensive war against the emperor by means of the fleet, with Stralsund as his base. He was convinced by the experience of Christian IV. of Denmark that the enemies' harbours could be wrested from them only by a successful offensive war on land; and, while quite alive to the risks of such an enterprise in the face of two large armies, Tilly's and Wallenstein's, each of them larger than his own, he argued that the vast extent of territory and the numerous garrisons which the enemy was obliged to maintain, more than neutralized his numerical superiority. Merely to blockade all the German ports with the Swedish fleet was equally impossible. The Swedish fleet was too weak for that; it would be safer to take and fortify the pick of them. In Germany itself, if he once got the upper hand, he would not find himself without resources. It is no enthusiastic crusader, but an anxious and farseeing if somewhat speculative statesman who thus opens his mind to us. No doubt religious considerations largely influenced Gustavus. He had the deepest sympathy for his fellow-Protestants in Germany; he regarded them as God's peculiar people, himself as their divinely appointed deliverer. But his first duty was to Sweden; and, naturally and rightly, he viewed the whole business from a predominantly Swedish point of view. Lutherans and Calvinists were to be delivered from a "soul-crushing tyranny"; but they were to be delivered by a foreign if friendly power; and that power claimed as her reward the hegemony of Protestant Europe and all the political privileges belonging to that exalted position.

On the 19th of May 1630 Gustavus solemnly took leave of the estates of the realm assembled at Stockholm. He appeared before them holding in his arms his only child and heiress, the little princess Christina, then in her fourth year, and tenderly committed her to the care of his loyal and devoted people. Then he solemnly took the estates to witness, as he stood there "in the sight of the Almighty," that he had begun hostilities "out of no lust for war, as many will certainly devise and imagine," but in self-defence and to deliver his fellow-Christians from oppression. On the 7th of June 1630 the Swedish fleet set sail, and two days after midsummer day, the whole army, 16,000 strong, was disembarked at Peenemunde. Gustavus's plan was to take possession of the mouths of the Oder Haff, and, resting upon Stralsund in the west and Prussia in the east, penetrate into Germany. In those days rivers were what railways now are, the great military routes; and Gustavus's German war was a war waged along river lines. The opening campaign was to be fought along the line of the Oder. Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, and the key of the Oder line, was occupied and converted into a first-class fortress. He then proceeded to clear Pomerania of the piebald imperial host composed of every nationality under heaven, and officered by Italians, Irishmen, Czechs, Croats, Danes, Spaniards and Walloons. Gustavus's army has often been described by German historians as an army of foreign invaders; in reality it was far more truly Teutonic than the official defenders of Germany at that period. Gustavus's political difficulties (see SWEDEN: _History_) chained him to his camp for the remainder of the year. But the dismissal of Wallenstein and the declaration in Gustavus's favour of Magdeburg, the greatest city in the Lower Saxon Circle, and strategically the strongest fortress of North Germany, encouraged him to advance boldly. But first, honour as well as expediency moved him to attempt to relieve Magdeburg, now closely invested by the imperialists, especially as his hands had now been considerably strengthened by a definite alliance with France (treaty of Barwalde, 13th of January 1631). Magdeburg, therefore, became the focus of the whole campaign of 1631; but the obstructive timidity of the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony threw insuperable obstacles in his way, and, on the very day when John George I. of Saxony closed his gates against Gustavus the most populous and prosperous city in North Germany became a heap of smoking ruins (20th of May). Gustavus, still too weak to meet the foe, entrenched himself at Werben, at the confluence of the Havel and Elbe. Only on the 12th of September did the elector of Saxony, alarmed for the safety of his own states, now invaded by the emperor, place himself absolutely at the disposal of Gustavus; and, five days later, at the head of the combined Swedish-Saxon army, though the Swedes did all the fighting, Gustavus routed Tilly at the famous battle of Breitenfeld, north of Leipzig.

The question now was: In what way should Gustavus utilize his advantage? Should he invade the Austrian crown lands, and dictate peace to Ferdinand II. at the gates of Vienna? Or should he pursue Tilly westwards and crush the league at its own hearth and home? Oxenstjerna was the first alternative, but Gustavus decided in favour of the second. His decision has been greatly blamed. More than one modern historian has argued that if Gustavus had done in 1631 what Napoleon did in 1805 and 1809, there would have been a fifteen instead of a thirty years' war. But it should be borne in mind that, in the days of Gustavus, Vienna was by no means so essential to the existence of the Habsburg monarchy as it was in the days of Napoleon; and even Gustavus could not allow so dangerous an opponent as Tilly time to recover himself. Accordingly, he set out for the Rhine, taking Marienberg and Frankfort on his way, and on the 20th of December entered Mainz, where he remained throughout the winter of 1631-1632. At the beginning of 1632, in order to bring about the general peace he so earnestly desired, he proposed to take the field with an overwhelming numerical majority. The signal for Gustavus to break up from the Rhine was the sudden advance of Tilly from behind the Danube. Gustavus pursued Tilly into Bavaria, forced the passage of the Danube at Donauworth and the passage of the Lech, in the face of Tilly's strongly entrenched camp at Rain, and pursued the flying foe to the fortress of Ingolstadt where Tilly died of his wounds a fortnight later. Gustavus then liberated and garrisoned the long-oppressed Protestant cities of Augsburg and Ulm, and in May occupied Munich. The same week Wallenstein chased John George from Prague and manoeuvred the Saxons out of Bohemia. Then, armed as he was with plenipotentiary power, he offered the elector of Saxony peace on his own terms. Gustavus suddenly saw himself exposed to extreme peril. If Tilly had made John George such an offer as Wallenstein was now empowered to make, the elector would never have become Gustavus's ally; would he remain Gustavus's ally now? Hastily quitting his quarters in Upper Swabia, Gustavus hastened towards Nuremberg on his way to Saxony, but finding that Wallenstein and Maximilian of Bavaria had united their forces, he abandoned the attempt to reach Saxony, and both armies confronted each other at Nuremberg which furnished Gustavus with a point of support of the first order. He quickly converted the town into an entrenched and fortified camp. Wallenstein followed the king's example, and entrenched himself on the western bank of the Regnitz in a camp twelve English miles in circumference. His object was to pin Gustavus fast to Nuremberg and cut off his retreat northwards. Throughout July and August the two armies faced each other immovably. On the 24th of August, after an unsuccessful attempt to storm Alte Veste, the key of Wallenstein's position, the Swedish host retired southwards.

Towards the end of October, Wallenstein, after devastating Saxony, was preparing to go into winter quarters at Lutzen, when the king surprised him as he was crossing the Rippach (1st of November) and a rearguard action favourable to the Swedes ensued. Indeed, but for nightfall, Wallenstein's scattered forces might have been routed. During the night, however, Wallenstein re-collected his host for a decisive action, and at daybreak on the 6th of November, while an autumn mist still lay over the field, the battle began. It was obviously Gustavus's plan to drive Wallenstein away from the Leipzig road, north of which he had posted himself, and thus, in case of success, to isolate, and subsequently, with the aid of the Saxons in the Elbe fortresses, annihilate him. The king, on the Swedish right wing, succeeded in driving the enemy from the trenches and capturing his cannon. What happened after that is mere conjecture, for a thick mist now obscured the autumn sun, and the battle became a colossal melee the details of which are indistinguishable. It was in the midst of that awful obscurity that Gustavus met his death--how or where is not absolutely certain; but it would seem that he lost his way in the darkness while leading the Smaland horse to the assistance of his infantry, and was despatched as he lay severely wounded on the ground by a hostile horseman.

By his wife, Marie Eleonora, a sister of the elector of Brandenburg, whom he married in 1620, Gustavus Adolphus had one daughter, Christina, who succeeded him on the throne of Sweden.

See _Sveriges Historia_ (Stockholm, 1877, 81), vol. iv.; A.
Oxenstjerna, _Skrifter och Brefvexling_ (Stockholm, 1900, &c.); G.
Bjorlen, _Gustaf Adolf_ (Stockholm, 1890); R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia_
(Cambridge, 1905); C. R. L. Fletcher, _Gustavus Adolphus_ (London,
1892); J. L. Stevens, _History of Gustavus Adolphus_ (London, 1885);
J. Mankell, _Om Gustaf II. Adolfs politik_ (Stockholm, 1881); E.
Bluemel, _Gustav Adolf, Konig von Schweden_ (Eisleben, 1894); A.
Rydfors, _De diplomatiska forbindelserna mellan Sverige och England
1624-1630_ (Upsala, 1890). (R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS III. (1746-1792), king of Sweden, was the eldest son of Adolphus Frederick, king of Sweden, and Louisa Ulrica of Prussia, sister of Frederick the Great, and was born on the 24th of January 1746. Gustavus was educated under the care of two governors who were amongst the most eminent Swedish statesmen of the day, Carl Gustaf Tessin and Carl Scheffer; but he owed most perhaps to the poet and historian Olof von Dalin. The interference of the state with his education, when he was quite a child, was, however, doubly harmful, as his parents taught him to despise the preceptors imposed upon him by the diet, and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation. But even his most hostile teachers were amazed by the brilliance of his natural gifts, and, while still a boy, he possessed that charm of manner which was to make him so fascinating and so dangerous in later life, coupled with the strong dramatic instinct which won for him his honourable place in Swedish literature. On the whole, Gustavus cannot be said to have been well educated, but he read very widely; there was scarce a French author of his day with whose works he was not intimately acquainted; while his enthusiasm for the new French ideas of enlightenment was as sincere as, if more critical than, his mother's. On the 4th of November 1766, Gustavus married Sophia Magdalena, daughter of Frederick V. of Denmark. The match was an unhappy one, owing partly to incompatibility of temper, but still more to the mischievous interference of the jealous queen-mother.

Gustavus first intervened actively in politics in 1768, at the time of his father's interregnum, when he compelled the dominant Cap faction to summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in a monarchical direction. But the victorious Hats refused to redeem the pledges which they had given before the elections. "That we should have lost the constitutional battle does not distress us so much," wrote Gustavus, in the bitterness of his heart; "but what does dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its own felicity in absolute anarchy." From the 4th of February to the 25th of March 1771, Gustavus was at Paris, where he carried both the court and the city by storm. The poets and the philosophers paid him enthusiastic homage, and all the distinguished women of the day testified to his superlative merits. With many of them he maintained a lifelong correspondence. But his visit to the French capital was no mere pleasure trip; it was also a political mission. Confidential agents from the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the duc de Choiseul, weary of Swedish anarchy, had resolved to discuss with him the best method of bringing about a revolution in Sweden. Before he departed, the French government undertook to pay the outstanding subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half million livres annually; and the comte de Vergennes, one of the great names of French diplomacy, was transferred from Constantinople to Stockholm. On his way home Gustavus paid a short visit to his uncle, Frederick the Great, at Potsdam. Frederick bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he had guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution, and significantly advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.

On his return to Sweden Gustavus made a sincere and earnest attempt to mediate between the Hats and Caps who were ruining the country between them (see SWEDEN: _History_). On the 21st of June 1771 he opened his first parliament in a speech which awakened strange and deep emotions in all who heard it. It was the first time for more than a century that a Swedish king had addressed a Swedish diet from the throne in its native tongue. The orator laid especial stress on the necessity of the sacrifice of all party animosities to the common weal, and volunteered, as "the first citizen of a free people," to be the mediator between the contending factions. A composition committee was actually formed, but it proved illusory from the first, the patriotism of neither of the factions being equal to the puniest act of self-denial. The subsequent attempts of the dominant Caps still further to limit the prerogative, and reduce Gustavus to the condition of a _roi faineant_, induced him at last to consider the possibility of a revolution. Of its necessity there could be no doubt. Under the sway of the Cap faction, Sweden, already the vassal, could not fail to become the prey of Russia. She was on the point of being absorbed in that northern system, the invention of the Russian vice-chancellor, Count Nikita Panin, which that patient statesman had made it the ambition of his life to realize. Only a swift and sudden _coup d'etat_ could save the independence of a country isolated from the rest of Europe by a hostile league. At this juncture Gustavus was approached by Jakob Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish nobleman of determined character, who had incurred the enmity of the Caps, with the project of a revolution. He undertook to seize the fortress of Sveaborg by a _coup de main_, and, Finland once secured, Sprengtporten proposed to embark for Sweden, meet the king and his friends near Stockholm, and surprise the capital by a night attack, when the estates were to be forced, at the point of the bayonet, to accept a new constitution from the untrammelled king. The plotters were at this juncture reinforced by an ex-ranger from Scania (Skane), Johan Kristoffer Toll, also a victim of Cap oppression. Toll proposed that a second revolt should break out in the province of Scania, to confuse the government still more, and undertook personally to secure the southern fortress of Kristianstad. After some debate, it was finally arranged that, a few days after the Finnish revolt had begun, Kristianstad should openly declare against the government. Prince Charles, the eldest of the king's brothers, was thereupon hastily to mobilize the garrisons of all the southern fortresses, for the ostensible purpose of crushing the revolt at Kristianstad; but on arriving before the fortress he was to make common cause with the rebels, and march upon the capital from the south, while Sprengtporten attacked it simultaneously from the east. On the 6th of August 1772 Toll succeeded, by sheer bluff, in winning the fortress of Kristianstad. On the 16th Sprengtporten succeeded in surprising Sveaborg. But contrary winds prevented him from crossing to Stockholm, and in the meanwhile events had occurred which made his presence there unnecessary.

On the 16th of August the Cap leader, Ture Rudbeck, arrived at Stockholm with the news of the insurrection in the south, and Gustavus found himself isolated in the midst of enemies. Sprengtporten lay weather-bound in Finland, Toll was five hundred miles away, the Hat leaders were in hiding. Gustavus thereupon resolved to strike the decisive blow without waiting for the arrival of Sprengtporten. He acted with military promptitude. On the evening of the 18th all the officers whom he thought he could trust received secret instructions to assemble in the great square facing the arsenal on the following morning. At ten o'clock on the 19th Gustavus mounted his horse and rode straight to the arsenal. On the way his adherents joined him in little groups, as if by accident, so that by the time he reached his destination he had about two hundred officers in his suite. After parade he reconducted them to the guard-room of the palace and unfolded his plans to them. He then dictated a new oath of allegiance, and every one signed it without hesitation. It absolved them from their allegiance to the estates, and bound them solely to obey their lawful king, Gustavus III. Meanwhile the senate and the governor-general, Rudbeck, had been arrested and the fleet secured. Then Gustavus made a tour of the city and was everywhere received by enthusiastic crowds, who hailed him as a deliverer. On the evening of the 20th heralds perambulated the streets proclaiming that the estates were to meet in the Rikssaal on the following day; every deputy absenting himself would be regarded as the enemy of his country and his king. On the 21st, a few moments after the estates had assembled, the king in full regalia appeared, and taking his seat on the throne, delivered that famous philippic, one of the masterpieces of Swedish oratory, in which he reproached the estates for their unpatriotic venality and licence in the past. A new constitution was recited by the estates and accepted by them unanimously. The diet was then dissolved.