The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

mainly to the man who had laid down his sword on
the field of Lutzen.
When Gustavus Adolphus died, the great
chancellor and statesman, Oxenstierna, sprang to
the helm. His were the ablest hands, after those of
Gustavus, to guide the State. Oxenstierna was the
friend, as well as the minister, of the deceased
monarch; he perfectly knew and thoroughly
sympathized with the policy of the king, and of all
the survivors he was the best fitted by his genius,
his lofty patriotism, and his undoubted
Protestantism, to carry out the views of his late
master. The Senate of Sweden was equally
valorous and prompt. It met at Stockholm on the
16th of March, 1633, and passed a resolution "to
prosecute the war against the Roman emperor and
Popish League in Germany, until it should please
Almighty God to establish a happy peace for the
good of his Church."[1] Nor were able generals
wanting to the Diet to carry out its resolution. If the
deceased king had a not unworthy successor in the
State in Oxenstierna, he had also not unmeet
representatives in the field in the generals who had
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