MILITARY 262

•

2

Publishe I in 1993 b\Osprey Publishing, Elms Court, Chapel Way, Botley,Oxford 0 '2 9LP, Uniled l\:.ingdom.Email: osprq(ii osprq-publishiug.co.uk

19930spre) Publishing Ltd.Reprinted 1997, 1999

\11 right. resened..\pan from any fair dealing for thepurpose of primle sfUd~. research, criticism or re"iew, aspermined under the COP) righl Designs and Patems ct.19 8. no pan ofthi puhlication may be reproduced.tored in a relrie,al S)Slem, or lransmitted in any form or

b, am means, electronic, electrical, chemical,• •

mechanical. optical. phOIOCOP) ing, recording orothen'ise. withoulthc prior permis ion of the copyrightowner. Enquiries should be addressed to lhe Publishers.

I Bl\ 1 '.'\23508;') ,). .

Printed throu~h \\ orld Prinl Ltd. Ill)n~ hong

rtist's ote:Reader may care to note that the original paintingsfrom \\hich the colour plates in this book wereprepared arc available for private sale. IIreproducl ion copyright \\ hatsoe\ er is retained by thePubli her.-\11 enquiries ~hould be addre sed to:

corplOPO Box ~r,

Hail ham,E. ussex Bi 27 2SL

The Publi hers regret that they can enter into nocorr'.spondence UpOIl this matter.

FOR A C.ITAI.OGUf: OF -1t.L BOOKS PUBI.I tiED BY OSPREY

MtI.lTARY, A TOMOTIVE AND AVIATION PLEASE WRITE TO:

The 1arkering Manager, 0 prey Publishing, PO Box 140,Wellingborough, t\onhanrs, 84Z, nited Kingdom

\'tSIT OSPREY'S WEBSITE IT:

hllp: / / U'W/P. O.fprq-publishiug.co.uk

AuthOJ"s note:This volume completes the two-part survey begun inMAA 235 The Army ofGuslavlls Adolphus (I):Infantry. Besides the cavalry mentioned in the title,there are short sections on dragoons, artillery, andbattle tactics. Since many of the ideas put forward arcat odds with 'accepted' \'iews, a detailed bibliographyhas been added, together with source notes wherespace has permitted.

cknowledgements:Without the initial help of Arne Daniclsson, curator ofthe Royal Army Museum in Stockholm (nO\\ retired),this project might ne\'er have bcen attempted; I mu tthank him above all for permis ion to use his researchnotes. I would also like to thank Keith Roberts forlong discussions from which some of the theoriespresented here have emerged; John Rohde for hislaxative effect on my often constipated brain,particularly in the layout of the colour plates; ickSekunda for his constant moral support; and RichardHook for patiently turning my fussy sketches into

•masterpIeces.Research was carried out mainly in the Briti h

Library, Uppsala niversity Library, and inStockholm, in the Royal rmy Museum, theSlott arki\'Ct, Krigsarki\'et and Riksarki\ et; and Iwould like to thank the staff of these institutions. Thefollowing were especially generous with their timc:Bengt Kylsbcrg of Skoklostcr lott; Ewa Turek BengtHermansson, flo Sylwan and Albert Coyet of theRoyal rmy l\luseum; il Drejholt of theLivrustkammaren; and Andrcw Bodley and ThomRichardson of the Royal rmouries at the To\\ cr ofLondon. Finally, my thanks to Lee]ohnson and. ickCaldon ofOsprcy, for their patience andencouragemcnt.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS: 2

I Some contemporaries regarded carbines as a separate class; but the differenc..'Cs "ere minimal.

Reuter, carbine!) was named after his principalweapon, called variously an arquebus, Bandelier-rohror carbine (see Plate GI). This firearm shaped thearquebusier's role: mostly, to skirmish in minoractions and to perform all the other campaign dutiesto which the heavily encumbered cuirassiers wereunsuited. In pitched battles arquebusiers were to'shoot in' the charges of cuirassiers and to protecttheir exposed flanks. The other equipment of thearquebusier was less important, and at best included

INTRODUCTION

'Had 110t our Joote stoode like a wall, there had not aman oJus come offalyve ... our horse did but poorely.'(Colonel Fleetwood, on the Swedes at the battle ofLiitzen, 1632)

Much of the fame of Gustavus Adolphus has beenfounded upon his cavalry. He is said to have made hiscavalry attack aggressively, training them to charge inwith the sword instead of haiting before contact andfiring ineffectively with the pistol; in so doing he issaid to have reversed the stagnation of Europeancavalry warfare, giving it back fluidity and vigour. Infact, as Colonel Fleetwood and many other eyewit­nesses record, contemporaries were not at all im­pressed with Gustavus's cavalry. Gustavus's allegedtransformation of cavalry warfare is scarcely ment­ioned in 17th century military manuals.

To find the truth we must, as with all the'Gustavus mythology', set aside pre-conceivedideas-most of which are based on unsound 18th and19th century research-and start afresh. Before wediscuss what changes Gustavus did or did not make tohis cavalry we must first understand what washappening elsewhere in Europe.

The cuirassier and the arquebusier

At the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, militarytheorists divided Western European cavalry into onlytwo distinct classes: cuirassiers and arquebusiers.(Lancers were as good as obsolete by this date, anddragoons were really just infantry on horseback.)

The cuirassier (Kiirisser, Kiirassirer, corazzen)got his name from his heavy armour, the Kiiriss orKiirass, which covered him from head to below theknee (see Plate CI). This armour shell made thecuirassier sword-proof and almost bullet-proof, anddetermined his chief function: to get into the thick ofthe fray and decide the battle, principally with thepair of pistols he almost always carried.

The arquebusier (harquebusier, Bandelier-

Gustavus Adolphus, KingofSweden, by P. vanHil1egaert dated 1634. Thisportrait, like the greatlT1ajority, was not paintedfrolT1life, but copied frolT1a published engraving. Theworst ofseveral mistakes

is the lT1etal arlT1our, whichGustavus did not wcarduring the GerlT1ancalT1paign because ofawound received in Polandin 1627. (Col1ection ofBaroness M. Bohnstedt,Stockholm)

3

a pair of pistols, a back- and breastplate, and an open­faced helmet.

These two patterns ofcavalry were in use in mostof the wealthier states of Western Europe. Both ofGustavu 's main opponents-the German CatholicLeague (Tilly's Leaguists), and the Holy RomanEmpire of the German Nation (Wallenstein'sImperialists)-had cavalry forces made up almostentirely of arquebusiers and cuirassiers. The Swedestoo b 1618 were attempting to turn out theircavalry according to these two 'modern' patterns, butwith little ucce s.

NATIVECAVALRY

The main problem was that Sweden had never reallybeen a cavalry nation. Most Swedish towns had beenestablished in the time of the Vikings on easilydefensible river inlets and the shores of Sweden'sgreat inland lakes. These waterways continued to bethe rno t convenient form of transport, since densefore t covered much of the country and the roadnetwork wa till in its infancy.

The cold climate and poor winter grazing hadalso hindered attempt to breed good horses, and thishowed in the small size of native breeds. Contem­

poraries were quick to apologi e for Swedish horses:'In truth they are very stout', wrote one anonymouswriter, but 'in consideration of their low stature,exceedingly strong .. .'. According to muster rolls of1622 and 1623 the horse of the native Swedish cavalrytood on average 14 hands high for officers, and onlyII to 13 hands for troopers. Even cuirassier mountswere required to be only '14 hands high behind thesaddle'. The minimums in Frederick the Great's and

apoleon' armies were 14 hands 3 inches for hussarsand IS hands 2 inches for cuirassiers. 2

Sweden's othet great problem was a technologygap: wedish workshops simply could not manufac­ture in bulk the basic hardware of the 'modern'cavalr man. The wheel-locks of arquebuses andpi tol required expertise that would become avail-

•

1 Direct comparison il!o cOl11pliC'.atet..l. since in the hiler period horst..'S were measured 10 the witherswhich could br $e\cral In hes hlghc:r depending on breed. The 'hand' ",a~ the breadth of a man '<;

p:llm-u~uath taken L<; .. inche.. (10 l'el1lim<.'tres).

4

able in Sweden on a large scale only in the 1640S; untilthen most such weapons had to be imported fromHolland or Germany. Armour too, until the late1620S, had in the main to be purchased abroad.

The overall situation, then, when Gustavusentered on his programme of reforms in 1620 wasthis: Sweden had only one permanent native cuiras­sier unit, the Adelsfana, in which the Swedishnobility were required to serve as part of their feudalobligation to the king: a unit which, perver ely, washardly ever called out to serve in time of war. Bydefault, the rest of Sweden's native cavalry wouldhave been regarded by European standard as verypoorly equipped arquebusiers.

The light horselTlan

In 1621 Gustavus, back from his eye-opening tour ofGermany and his first campaign against the Poles,decided to do something about the poor quality of hisnative cavalry. His measure, at first sight trivial, wasquite radical in effect: he made his native ar­quebusiers give up their arquebuses, which appear nomore in the muster rolls after 1621, and concentratedinstead on supplying them with pistol . The nativeSwedish hor eman's weapons thus became (ideally) apair of pistols and a word; and his armour, a back­and breastplate and an open-faced hclmet.

This reform is said to have been motivated by theSwedish cavalry' poor showing again t the Poles. Itcan also be seen from a more technical viewpoint:there was no point having arquebusiers (supportcavalry) when there was hardly any attack cavalry(cuira siers) for them to support.

As a troop type, Gustavus's cavalry reverted tothe tried and tested class prevalent in the poorer,mostly Protestant areas of northern Germany in the16th century: the light horseman (R£ngerpjel'd, or inSwedish, liitta l'yttal'e). The light horseman was anall-purpose cavalryman: he could carry out bothshock attack and campaign duties, although neitherof these as well as the more specialised Europeancavalry types.

Since the light horseman had more or less beenforgotten on the Continent, Europeans were notentirely sure what to call Gustavus's cavalry. Tomany they were cuirassiers since their primary armwas the pistol and they were first line (though secondrate) shock cavalry. To others (like the English) they

jealously during the disastrous siege of Wallenstein'scamp in summer 1632, giving his countrymen prefer­ential foddering-much to the disgust of the Germanmercenary cavalry, whose horses starved to death intheir thousands.

By the battle of Liitzen the god-fearing Swedishnative cavalry, with their iron discipline, years ofexperience and regimental traditions, were undoubt-

were 'harquebusiers' -after the degree of armourrather than the firearm. Eventually the term Reiter

(horseman) gained popularity. However, because ofthe rather vague and general nature of this term, thehorseman was not always recognised as a distincttroop type.

Recruitnlent and organisation

Unlike native Swedish infantry, who were conscripts,native light horsemen were mostly volunteers. Thesupply of willing recruits never dried up, since thealternative for the young man ofaverage means was tostay at home and run the annual risk of conscriptionto the infantry-a far more dangerous prospect, asinfantry always took higher casualties on campaign.

Cavalry service had other rewards: it paid rela­tively well (and more regularly); and the volunteer'sfamily and servants automatically became exemptfrom conscription, and from several taxes besides. Asa further bonus, if the volunteer survived his servicehe was re-established into civilian life on a farmprovided at the state's expense.

Like the native infantry, the cavalry were orga­nised into units with a regional character. At firstthese were only of company size, but in 1627 thesecompanies were grouped for the first time into fiveregional regiments. Each regiment began about fourcompanies strong, but by 1631 most had beenbrought up to the regulation eight companies each of

125 horses. A few companies were usually kept athome for defence while the others went to war

overseas.

On canlpaign

When the Swedish cavalry arrived in Poland in 1626,

constantly short of weapons, equipment and horses,they were a sorry sight by German standards. TallScandinavians on stunted, fat mounts, they may evenhave had a somewhat comical air. The situationimproved slightly with purchases of horses in Polandand neighbouring countries; but as late as the battleofBreitenfeld in 1631, Tilly could still point out to hismen that the Swedish cavalry were 'so badlymounted, that your baggage-boys have better horsesthan them'.

After Breitenfeld, central Germany opened up to

Gustavus, and there were great improvements in thenative cavalry's horses. Gustavus husbanded these

The clothing worn byGustavus at Klein-Werdernear Danzig (Gdansk) onthe night of2/3 June r627.Gustavus was crossing theVistula in a slTlall boatduring a lTlinor skirlTlishwhen he was hit by alTlusket shot. The ballentered above his righthip, and lodged betweenthe fat and nluscle above

his navel; it was a lTlinorwound, and he was ridingagain within a week. Thesilver-coloured satindoublet bordered in silvergalloon has deterioratedgreatly with age, so thatthe 'pinked' (punched)holes are only just visible.The breeches are ofgreySpanish cloth. (LRK 3375and3849)

5

The 1634 Form ofGovernment

The 1634 'Form of Government' was Sweden's firstconstitution. It laid down in formal terms how thenewly emergent Baltic superpower would be run.One paragraph set down the organisation of the army,and listed for the first time the native cavalryregiments in the following order of precedence:

Adelsfana (Nobles)UpplandVastgotaAbolan-Bjorneborg (Finns)SmalandNyland-Tavastehus (Finns)

••

OstgotaViborg-Nyslott (Finns)

their war-cry 'hakkaa pdiille!' ('Hack 'em down!'). Insavagery and brutality they hadfew rivals. After thebattle of Oldendorf in 1633 the Scottish mercenaryJames Turner personally witnessed 'A great manykill'd in cold blood by the Finns, who professe to giveno quarter'. 'God save us all,' wrote petrified Germanclerics, from the 'agmen horribile haccapellitorum'­'the terrifying onward march of the hackapells ... '.

Finnish cavalry were organised much as theSwedes. They increased rapidly in numbers from justfour companies in 1618, settling at 24 in 1628. Theywere not, however, at first organised into regionalregiments. While stationed at home most remainedunder the command of a single 'Colonel of theFinnish Cavalry'. Companies were taken out of thispool as required for service overseas. Only 12companies went to Germany with Gustavus; thesewere under the overall command of Colonel TorstenStalhandske, who in 1634 became Major-Generaland chief of all the Finnish and native Swedishcavalry in Germany.

edly the best horsemen Gustavus had available. Butthey were few in number, and in a straight fight werestill no match for Wallenstein's cuirassiers, who onseveral occasions rode clean through them like a knifethrough butter.

Finnish cavalry

In the 17th century Finland was a province of theSwedish realm, and though Finnish soldiers served inseparate Finnish regiments these were an integralpart of the Swedish army. The impoverished andunruly Finns (much like England's Scots and Irish)supplied a far higher proportion of their populationto the army than their Swedish masters.

Finnish cavalry were particularly good, largelybecause of contact with Russia and the Baltic states.Finnish horses were greatly improved by the infusionof Eastern blood; and the Finnish horsemen them­selves, already lawless cattle-rustlers by nature, tookreadily to the wild Eastern way of war on horseback.Very soon after their arrival in Germany the Finnishcavalry achieved notoriety as the 'ha.ckapeliter' or'hackapells' (Finnish hakkapelitta), derived from

••

•

6

Gustavus's clothing fromthe battle ofDirschau inAugust r627, where he wasshot by a Polishmarksman. According toDr. Salvius, the bulletentered 'Just over theclavicle, two fingers fromthe windpipe on the rightshoulder and now sits . ..between the spine and thetop corner ofthe shoulder

•blade . .. and presses thenerve, which . .. gives the

right arm all its movementand feeling, therefore HisMajesty's two smallestfingers ofthe right handaresomewpatdeadened~

The bullet was, it seems,never removed, andprevented Gustavus fromwearing armour. Thebuffcoat was nicked by thebullet at the neck and hasbloodstains down thefront. (LRK 3369 & 3372)

CAVALRY REGIMENT(1000 horses)

Colonel'. LLCoIonol'. Major's Captain'sCXlII~Y company company company

Captain'. Captaln's Captain" Caplaln'scompany Gaupany company CQltpany

R,glmenta' St.rr(Native Reglmenl)

Regimental Sta"­(Mercenary Reglm,nt)

NATIVE CAVALRY Company SlaWCOMPANY

Captainll 4 horses(125 horses) LI9utanant 3

Standard-bearer 3Corporals (2) 4Furrier 2Muster clerk 1Chaplain 1Provost 1

Troopers Barber (Surgeon) 1102 men Blacksmlfh 1

Trumpeters (2) 2

Total 13 Persons with 23 horses

(* Exact suucture varies)(~ or Col. Lt.·Col. MoJor)

MERCENARY CAVALRY Company StallCOMPANY

(125 horses) RlttmaJsterll 6 hof..sLieutenant 4COfnet 3Quartermaster 2Corporals (3) 6Trumpeters (2) 2Feldscher (Surgeon) 1

Troopers Blacksmith 1

Musler clark 199 men

Total 12 Persons wIth 26 horses

(~ or Col. Lt.·Col, (Sgt·) Major)

COlOnellieutenant·ColonelMajorRegimental QuartermasterRaglmenlal ClarkAegfmental Surgeon

Total 6 Persons

Though diRering indetails, dIe organisation ofnative and nlCrccnarycavalry regiments wasessentially the arne. Atfull strength bodlnumbered 1,000 'horses'organised into eight

COlonelL1eutenant·Colonel(Sergeant·) MaJorRegimental QuartermasterSchultzRegimental ClerkProvostBoys (3)Chaplains (4)

Total 14 Persons

(. Exact structure varies)

cODlpanies. ORicers wererequired to provide adifferent number ofsparehorses depending on theirrank, but these weremostly riderless or in

•contemporary/argon'empty'. Thus a company

of125 'horses' nwnbered inreality about 100 troopersplus a dozen or so officers.

Cavalry units offour ortwelve companies werealso raised.

Table .\: :\'ati\e Ca\alry sent to Germany, 16.,0-.'3 -

..Os/go/a499 'hor e ' in 4 coys. shipped July 1630.Commander: Claus Dietrich Sperreuter to late1631; Lennart ilsson Baat to ovember1632. Standards: red.Viis/gota1,042 'hor e ' in coys. shipped July 1630.Commander: Erik Soop to late 1631; KnutSoop. tClndards: green.

maland1,001 'horses' in 8 coys. shipped 1630.Commander: Count Per Brahe; 1630/31 JonLilliesparre;July 1631 Fredrik Stenbock.Starldar,ds: blue; from 1635 yellow.Uppland508 'hor e ' in 4 coys. shipped August 1631.C01ll1ll{/.l1der: Isak xelsson Silfversparre.Standards: red.S ddermat7la1ld495 'horses' in 4 coys. shipped Sept. 1631.

Commander: Otto Sack. Standards: blue, withyellow fringes.Finland896 'horses' in 7 coys. arrived 1630 (three inAugust, four in ovember). 629 'horses' in 5coys. shipped May 1631 (four of them underEckholt). Standards: unknown, but eachcompany probably had a different colour.These operated in the following semi­independent squadrons, each of four

•

compames:1st squadronCommander: Torsten Sralhandske.2nd squadronCommander: Reinhold Wunsch; Feb. 1632Henrik Nading; 1633 Johan Wittenberg.3rd squadronCommander: Hans Eckholt; June 1633 ArvidWittenberg.

7

The Adelsfana of nobles, which existed for mostof the time on paper only, remained the seniornational unit. Each of the dependent territories of theSwedish Empire, such as Livonia and SwedishPomerania, later raised its own Adelsfana.

The most dramatic changes occurred in thevolunteer regiments, and were carried out by 1636.The Sodermanland cavalry was disbanded, and itsrecruiting areas were added to those of the Uppland

..and Ostgota cavalry. The Finnish cavalry were form-ally organised for the first time into three regionalregiments, which remained an integral part of theSwedish army until Finnish independence in 1809.

GERMAN

CAVALRY

The Swedes had long been supplementing theirnative horsemen with German mercenaries, thoughthey rarely had more than a few hundred at any 0I1etime. The first important additions came after thecapture of Riga in Livonia in 1621 and the sub­sequent annexation of most of the province. Livonia(modern Latvia and Estonia) had been ruled by the

infamous Teutonic Order since the 13th century, andwas heavily settled with Germans. As a result, even aslate as the 17th century Livonia had a strong knightlytradition and was better able to raise good cavalrythan the Swedish mainland. The Livonians raisedseveral companies of cuirassiers and a few companiesof light horsemen for the Swedes-mostly as the'Life Companies' of generals.

The first really large recruitment drive beganonly in 1626, when Col. Streiff (procurer ofGustavus's horse, 'Streiff') and Col. Teuffel went tonorth-east Germany to raise over 1,000 cavalry.These were all captured by the Poles at Hammersteinin April 1627, however, as they tried to join Gustavusin Polish Prussia by the land route. A few hundredwho refused service with the Poles returned toGermany and were sent on by ship later that year;they became Streiff's five-company-strong squadron,which consisted at least partly of arquebusiers.

In the meantime the Polish campaign boggeddown, because Gustavus had too few cavalry to riskmoving far from fortresses and towns for fear of beingoverwhelmed by the Polish cavalry. When he didfight, his cavalry deployed behind the infantry orintermixed with them to obtain maximum firesupport.

At the end of 1628 Gustavus had a stroke of good

_ _ ..._'-;Ji?' ,"ot - _----'

•

8

•

•

A company ofcuirassiersofthe combined Swedish­Saxon army in r6p. TheSwedes never had morethan a few companies ofcuirassiers, unlike theImperialists and Leaguistswho had many completeregiments. Three of1icersin the foreground wear thefashionable andcomfortable open-face'Hungarian' helmets, whilethe rest still have the socalled 'closed' helmets.From a German print ofan imagined triumph afterBreitenfeld. (KungligaBiblioteket, Stockholm)

fortune when Christian IV of Denmark disbandedhis mercenaries at the end of his hapless attempt tointervene in the Thirty Years' War (the so-called'Danish Phase'). Two regiments of arquebusiers,Rheingraf Otto Ludwig's and Hunecken's, wereshipped over lock, stock and barrel to Swedishservice; a third, Baudissin's, was formed in Germanyaround a cadre of disbanded ex-Danish veterans.This sudden influx of over 3,000 horsemen nearly

doubled Gustavus's cavalry strength in Polish Prus­sia~ and for the first time he felt confident enough torisk expeditions into Poland proper-and moreimportantly, into Germany.

. Little further cavalry recruitment was attemptedbefore the German campaign, though some wereraised in Livonia and neighbouring Courland, partlyex-Polish service veterans. Many previously inde­pendent companies-especially of cuirassiers-were

Table B: Principal .\lerecnary Cavalry Regiments

Raised before the German Campaign:1626 J. STREIFF v. Lauenstein -30 M.

Pensen v. CALDENBACH -31 J. Bernhardv. Ohm (or Ehm) -35 to French pay.

1628 WulfH. v. Baudissin (12 coys.) -33Lorentz v. Hofkirchen -35d?

1628 RheingrafOtto Ludwig (12 coys.) -34etc? .

1628 C. v. Hiinecken (5 coys.) -31 Nicolas deCourville -34d.

Livonians: 1630 Fabian Aderkas (or Adrikas)-31 Tiesenhausen -34 etc.

Courlanders: 1630 E. Donhoff-32 Wrangel-34 etc.

1630 GrafJ.P. v. Ortenburg ('The King's LifeRegiment' to 1631)-31 G? v. Uslar-34d?

Raised in Germany before Breitenfeld:1630 Ake Tott -32 Carl Joachim Karberg -34d.1630 Sigfrid v. Damitz-31 Fr. M. v. Uslar-32

Markgraf Christoffer of Baden -32 W.Wendt v. CRATZENSTEIN -34d.

1630 AdolfD. v. Effcren called HALLE -31G.MI. Witzleben -32 Gustav Horn -34 G.Ml. Witzleben -42? etc.

Bohemians/Silesians: 1631? Adam Schaffmann-33d?.

Slavs/Pomeranians: 1630/31 AndreasKochtitzky (the younger) -33 Joachim E.Crockow -37 etc?

Raised in Germany after Breitenfeld:1631 Duke Bernhard of Sachsen-Weimar (The

'King's Life Regiment' to 1632) -34Bouillon -35 to French pay.

1631 Duke Wilhelm ofSachsen-Weimar-35Wolframsdorf-35 to Saxon service.

1631 Duke Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar -34Bodendorf-35 to French pay.

1631 GrafH. v. SOLMS-Laubach-32Cl. Conrad Zorn v. BULACH -34Markgraf of Ansbach -34d.

1631 Robert MONRO of Foulis (Germans)-33d?.

1632 J. Baner -41 etc.1632 Patrick Ruthven (Germans) -34 etc?1632 W. Goldstein -33 P. Sadler -34d.1632 J. Berghofer -34 etc?1632 Paul Khevenhiiller -32d.1632 WulfD. Truchsess -32d.French: 1632 Jean de Gassion (company, later

squadron) -34d?

Key: The first date is the year ofJevying, otherdates (e.g. '-32' = 1632) show changes ofcommander; d = unit disbanded; v. = von;Christian names-Ch = Christof, Cl =

Claus/Clas, D = Dietrich/Didrik, E = ErnstG = Georg, J = Johann/Johan, H =

Heinrich/Henrik, M = Moritz, Ml =Melchior, P = Philip/Filip, W = Wilhelm. Incomplex names, the part in capitals is theabbreviation normally used.

Note that this is only a small selection ofregiments. Many more were raised, especiallyafter Breitenfield.

9

brought together under the Count of Ortenburg toform the King's 'Life Regiment of Horse'. In all,however, no more than ten companies of fullyarmoured cuirassiers went to Germany.

fter Gusta vu s victory at Breitenfeld the Pro­te tant German nobility, previously hesitant andsceptical of Gu tavus's abilities, flooded to volunteertheir ervices. Though many of these recruits wereill-di ciplined rabble out to fill their pockets, therewas a hard core ofexperienced veterans who had beenfighting (un uccessfully) since the beginning of theThirty Year' ar in Protestant armies under theKing of Bohemia and Denmark and Count Ernst ofMansfcld. They brought with them more than adecade of hard-won military experience.

Most of the mercenary cavalry-including theregiments of arquebusiers levied in the 1620s-werenow termed by the Swedish administration simply as'horsemen'. Judging from prints, a fair proportionwere in fact still arquebusiers and fully armouredcuirassier. In 1632 the Swedes specifically recruited300 'Arkebusier' or 'karbinryuare' in Switzerland.

The influx of cavalry was balanced by that ofinfantry, so that the proportion of cavalry to infantryin Gu tavu main field army stayed constant ataround I to 2-indeed, so constant was thi ratio thatthis mu t have been deliberate policy. In the later1630 , because of the shorter overall life expectancyof infantr , and the rapid marches that became thenorm, the ratio regularly exceeded I to I; and at thebattle of Wittstock in 1636 there were fi e horsemento every four foot soldiers.

CAVALRY

ARMOUR &

EQUIPMENT

By the 1580 oldiers in the Low Countries andFrance were already discarding parts of their armour.They justified thi by saying that there were no morepitched battles-only skirmishes, which requiredmaximum mobility. Gustavus may have unwittinglytaken this trend a stage further when he personallytopped wearing armour after he was badly wounded

at Dir chau in 1627. His officers, whether wishing to

10

emulate the great man or simply to lighten theirloads, followed suit.

At the storming of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder in1631, according to the Swedish Intelligencer, manySwedish officers 'out of the bravery of their courage'prepared to risk the assault unarmoured, and had tobe personally ordered by Gustavus to put on theirarmour: 'For if my officers be killed, who shallcommand my soldiers?'

But apart from the policy of forcing his men towear armour, there was the problem ofsupplying it inthe first place. Gustavus was having difficulties evenin the early stages of the German campaign. On 6November 1630 he told Gustav Horn: 'We havewritten to you about horseman's armour, because youwill receive in all [only] 1,200 [sets], therefore bothBaudissin's and the other Prussian cavalry [i.e.mercenary regiments being sent from Prussia], aslong as there is a problem, shall be armed so that eachcompany is given 45 armours to equip the first threeranks of 15 horses.'

Aside from implying that Gu tavu wa stilldeploying his cavalry at least five deep (in the Dutchmanner) as late as 1630, this letter presaged evenmore serious armour shortages among the newmercenary regiments raised in 163 I. In January 1631Gustavus placed an order with the arm manufac­turer Louis De Geer for 4,000 light horseman'sarmours and 4,000 cuirassier ('curasz') armours. Butthe delivery had still not arrived by the battle ofBreitenfeld, where the Brandenburg liaison officerRittmeister Burcker dorf reported that: 'Few of his[Gustavus's] officers and soldiers had armour com­pared with the enemy who were armoured from headto foot.'

Gustavus's victory at Breitenfeld was a turningpoint. It told him something new: that it was infantryand artillery firepower and not cavalry body armourthat won battles. In September 1632, when De Geerfinally delivered a large batch of cavalry armour, hegot only a breathless torrent of complaints fromGustavus's inspector:

'I have searched through them four times andhave got no more than 197 [good] items ... They arenot polished, not filed either, and [there i ] not oneharness that does not have flaws and some holes, andaround the neck [is] so sharp that one may rip asunderboth clothes and hands; and they have such poor

The lightened cuirassier

The Imperialists soon lightened their own cuirassiersfor the same reason as the Swedes. The last largebatches of full cuirassier armours were produced inabout 1635. Some officers continued to wear theirornate suits much later (though not as often asportraits would indicate); but cuirassier troopersreduced their load to a pistol-proof breastplate andthin backplate-armour that was also (confusingly)known by the term 'cuirass'. The other classes ofcavalry also began to wear less armour: 'And now ... 'wrote the Swedish army veteran James Turner,'instead of Cuirassiers we have Harquebusiers, andinstead of Harquebusiers we have Horsemen, onlyarmed offensively' [i.e. without armour].

Though the lightening of armour was an inter­national trend, the Imperialists gave much of thecredit to the Swedes. When, for example, therenowned General Montecuccoli was giving advice to

leather [straps], that ifone bends on the leather a littleit comes off, and the [black] colour is so badly finishedthat it looks like pitch, and there is not a single helmetthat i made according to my proof. . .' Even thoughDe Geer's armours were no worse than any he hadsupplied earlier, Gustavus cancelled the order en­tirely: new armour for the cavalry had become a low

• •pnonty.After the battle of Nordlingen in 1634, with the

defeated Swedes on the run, warfare became evenmore fluid. On the last day of 1635 ChancellorOxenstierna wrote home from Germany that 'Nohorsemen's or soldiers' harness or pots need be senthere, since they have become little used, but mostlycast off because of the long marches one is engaged inhere (AOSB 1:14, P.391). Armour was never wornagain to the same degree. The 'Swedish phase' of theThirty Years' War (163°-1635) clearly marks thebeginning of the end of the widespread use of metalbody armour.

These cavalry areidentified as Swedes by thethree crowns on thcirstandards. They aresurprisingly wellarmoured: the shoulderpieces suggest cuirassierswho have discarded theircuisses. Their helmets are

ofHungarian style-with anasal bar and broad cheekguards-a type popular inall central Europeanarmies. Detail from a 1632equestrian portrait ofGustavus by j. van derHeyden. (KungJigaBiblioteket, Stockholm)

the Duke of Modena for the equipping of an army in1643, he wrote: 'Cuirassiers should be equipped withbreast and backharness, stormhat [i.e. helmet] tog­ether with two pistols and a sword. This is the waythat the Swedish cuirassiers. are armed.'Montecuccoli's 'Swedish cuirassier' was simplyGustavus's light horseman by another name. As themodel for the Imperialist cuirassier it survived littlechanged well into the 19th century. It is perhaps notstretching the point too far to say that even theFrench cuirassiers at Waterloo were descended fromGustavus's cheap and manoeuvrable light horseman.

BUFFCOATS ANDUNIFORMS

It has long been assumed that Thirty Years' Warcavalry all wore leather buffcoats. Many militarywriters of the period recommended them, and theyare a prominent feature in surviving portraits.Though there is good evidence that they werecommonplace in the 1640S and '50S, no actual proofhas so far been found that they were widely worn bySwedish cavalry during Gustavus's lifetime.

The fashion for buffcoats only really gained ahold in Europe in the 16IOS and '20S, and it may havetaken even longer for it to reach Sweden. Dutch

. . ..

I I

paintings suggest that as late as 1634 many Swedishtroopers still did not wear them. With the abundanceof elks in Scandinavia-the raw material for the bestbuffcoats-this may seem slightly odd. It is said,however, that an ancient Swedish custom made allSwedish elkhide the personal property of the king,and this may have delayed adoption in Sweden.

Buffcoats were also expensive:' ot a good one tobe gotten under £10, a very poor one for five or sixpounds', according to the well-known quote of anEnglish writer in 1640. The high quality elkhidebuffcoats with buckskin sleeves issued to the King'sLifeguard (Drabant) company in 1632 cost 12 Riks­

daler (£2.67) for old ones, and nearly 20 Rdr (£4-44)for new ones in materials alone (WardAces 1632, item29). These were sizable sums, considering that anordinary Swedish trooper's armour and helmet couldbe had for four to five Riksdaler (about b).

The image of the 1630S buffcoat that survivestoday is the officers' version, not the trooper's: fewtroopers could afford to have their portraits painted,and few of their workaday buffcoats have ended up inmuseums. Cheap and simple buffcoats made fromox- or cowhide could have been worn by troopers at afraction of the price of officer's buffcoats. Unfortu­nately, little documentary evidence for them hasturned up so far in Swedish sources. It may be thatbuffcoats were purchased by individuals or on aregimental basis, perhaps in the same way as otherleather goods such as saddlery and horse furniture.Whatever the truth of the matter, the 'classic'buffcoat with buff sleeves of the type worn byGustavus at Llitzen seems to have been a novelty in1632: at that date sleeveless ones were more common.

Right Close-up ofanotherDutch-Swedish sword, thistime with an upturnedguard and thumb-ring.The flattened pear shape ofthe pommel and bindingofthe hand grip areespecialJy clear. It oncehung over the gra ve ofaSwedish lieutenant-colonelat Yttergrans church.(Livrustkammaren ro/2])

This type ofsword with its'S'-shaped quilJons,flattened pear-shapedpommel and simple, cleanlines was the typical swordofthe Swedes in the ThirtyYears' War, and has conleto be calJed the 'Swedish'sword. It had its origins inthe Netherlands, and isthought to have come toSweden through the bulkpurchases ofweaponsfrom HolJand. The bladecomes from the famousGernlan sword townSolingen, and is dateableto between £620 and £640.

Total length is £.072metres. (Skokloster I2]42)

•

12

of pay. Hlinecken's'regiment in 1629 received nearly3,000 Rdr. worth of 'Dusincken' cloth of unspecifiedcolour; Baudissin's regiment in 163 I got nearly5,000 Rdr. of the same. The 'life companies' ofgenerals and dignitaries were also frequently kittedout in colourful and extravagant 'livery'-typeuniforms.

However, unlike Gustavus's infantry, sightingsin the field of uniformed cavalry are extremely rare. Ifcavalry did receive uniforms they must have coveredthem or mixed them with non-uniform garments, orthe uniforms must have been of an unremarkablecolour like grey. One or two cavalry regiments wereknown by colour names-the Uppland Regiment, forexample, was the 'Red Regiment of Horse' (see PlateD2); but this almost certainly referred only to flagcolours.

ca VjJlry general oftheThirty Years' War,Gottfried Heinrich vonPappenheim (r594-r632).(LRK 5775,5787:26, 43r r)

•

•

Officers tended to prefer amore decorative hilt thanthe 'Swedish' sword. Sonleofthese are now called'Pappenheimers' after thegreatest Imperialist

The riding jacket

Another argument against the use of the buffcoat bySwedish cavalry is evidence that many wore clothgarments instead. The Dutch paintings alreadymentioned show Swedish horsmen wearing unwais­ted cloth jackets much like those of the infantry, butslightly longer in cut.

Though cavalry generally could wear whateverclothes they pleased, in parts of mainland Europesome were issued with uniform jackets as late as the1620S. These garments seem to have been called'riding coats' or 'riding jackets' (German Reitrock,Swedish ridjacka). In 1612 an instruction for troopsraised in Moravia, but probably typical of much ofthe Imperial army, recommended that cavalrymenshould wear 'Clothing as they wish, only that thesame regiments or companies should have specialcoats [Rocke] in the same livery or colour, since notonly is it an ornament and a comfort, but also isserviceable to the horse in all actions to keep themtogether better. '

The riding jacket was superseded by the buff­coat, but we do occasionally read of it as the garmentof foot soldiers (see MAA 235, p.22). In backward

weden, it seems to have persisted as a cavalrygarment: in 1622 and again in 1623 ChancellorOxenstierna estimated the eost of issuing all 2,300native cavalry their 'annual clothing': 4 ells of piukcloth for troopers; 6 ells of English cloth for cor­porals, trumpeters and underofficers (AOSB 1:1,

S·383,386).In theory, all Swedish and Finnish native troops

sent to Germany in 1630 and 1631-infantry andcavalry-were issued with clothing, 5 ells of cloth perman (SKA III, p. 154). As late as June 1632 Gustavuswrote home to make sure there would be enoughcloth to kit out the 3,000 cavalry reinforcements heexpected in spring 1633, 'so that they should not beesteemed of lesser worth than other nations, or bescorned by anyone for their poor and bad equipping'.Whereas there i olid evidence that most conscriptinfantry did indeed get uniforms, there is almost notrace at all of issues to the native cavalry. It may bethat colonels obtained clothing for their men pri­vately, but the details are unclear.

Some mercenary cavalry regiments did, how­ever, get huge issues ofcloth from state sources in lieu

13

Cloaks and capes

Some of the cloth issues noted above may have beenintended for overcoats, capes, or cloaks, rather thanjackets. Wallhausen stresses the need for waterproofcloaks in addition to riding jackets or buffcoats: '[Thecavalryman] must without fail and for all [actions]have a cloak, under which he can put his weapons inrainy weather to cover and protect them.' Theincrea ing popularity of the buffcoat only impressedthe need for a cloak. The buffcoat may have beenimpervious to showers, but it was almost the exactopposite in heavy rain. 'When the buffcoat gets wet',wrote Wallhausen, 'it soaks up water like a sponge,and often will not dry out in two or three days',whereas cloth garments, 'you can have dry again inone or two hours.'

By 1635 even the impoverished Finnish cavalryhad cloaks: the French ambassador's secretary Ogierrecorded Finns, probably ofJohan Printz's squadronwhich had just been sent from Finland, carryingcloaks on their horses' cruppers ('pallium inpostilena').

troopers, could afford to turn out in a buffcoat,sculpted doublet, and beaver hat with plume; but theimpecunious Swedes and Finns had a great deal ofcatching up to do.

At Breitenfeld the Swedes' clothing, accordingeven to the pro-Swedish eyewitness Dr Salvius,compared badly with the finery of the 'besilvered,gilded and plumedecked imperialists'. At the samebattle, Monro implied that few Swedish officers evenhad plumes, in stark contrast to their ill-fated Saxonallies: 'The painted Souldiers the Saxons, with theirplumed officers; which feathers served them 1 thinkein their flight, for tokens rather to cut them downby ... ' .

The victory at Breitenfeld brought a degree ofaffluence to the Swedish cavalry in Germany, butofficers fresh from home continued to be meanlyattired. As Ogier noted of the same Finnish cavalry in1635, 'I looked around where the officers might be,but those 1saw on horseback 1 took as stable-boys, soshabbily and poorly were they dressed'.

Officers' clothing

A man on horseback inevitably saw himself as a cutabove the ordinary footsoldier, and stressed thisfurther by adopting the gentlemanly airs and fashionsof a cavalier. Many Germans who volunteered forGustavus's mercenary regiments, both officers and

The foreground ofHillegaert's 1634 portraitofGustavus shows acavalry action betweenSwedes (right) ,wdImperialists (left). The

Swedish cavalry wear clothjackets instead ofthebuffcoats oftheIITIperialists, and felc hatsinstead ofhelmets.

'They took us for musketeers, seeing that no animal inthe world is more like a musketeer than is a dragoon, and

ifa dragoon/ails/rom his horse, he rises up a musketeer.'

Dragoons were little more than infantry on horse­back, as is clear in this passage from Grimmels­hausen's Simplicissimus, a partly autobiographicalnovel set during the Thirty Years' War and pub­lished in the 1660s. Gustavus's dragoons were nodifferent: 'The Dragooners ride like Horse-men: but

14

Gustavus in action,probably at Liitzen­shown correctly this timewithout armour. Behindhim is a figure wearing acloth jacket and a hatcocked at the front,perhaps a native lighthorseman. The jacket hasno shoulder rolls, no collarand few buttons; thefalling rider in theforeground gives a usefulrear view ofa sinlilarjacket and shows the splitskirts. The rider on theextreme right alreadywears a neckerchiefra therthan a lace collar at thisearly da te; this was todevelop later into thecravat. Oil painting by theDutchman Jan MartszendeJonge, dated 1634.(Stockholms Slott)

they fight on foot', wrote Watts in the SwedishIntelligenceI'.

The dragoon as a troop type is generally thoughtto have originated in the late r6th century in France;but appears first in Sweden in the r6ros. The earliestSwedish dragoons were mercenaries commanded byFrenchmen and Italians such as De la Barre, De laChapelle, and Carnissini. Some of these units hadFrenchmen in the ranks-clearly the French hadsome expertise in this field. During the entire Polishcampaign the Swedes had no more than a half dozencompanies of dragoons, and only a single companyaccompanied Gustavus during his first few months inGermany-under a Captain Daniel de St. Andre,who in fact appears as a character in Grimmels­hausen's novel.

Gustavus's first dragoon regiment-Taupadel's-was formed only at the very end of r630,when several of the old free-companies were com­bined into a squadron and recruited up to regimentalstrength. Further regiments were raised shortlyafterwards (see Table C). Taupadel's regiment, how­ever, was the only sizeable dragoon unit that accom­panied Gustavus for a large part of his campaigns. Atits maximum strength in April r632 it numberedr,200 men in r2 companies, but usually was consider-

Table C: Principal dragoon units

r62r Guillaume de la Barre (3 coys.) -25 etc?r630 Georg ChristofTaupadel (4-r2 coys.)

-34 etc?r630 Lars Kagg (8 coys.) -35 etc?r63r Daniel Dumcny (8 coys.) -33 etc?r63r Antoni Monier (4 coys.) -35 etc?r63r Georg Christoffer Rosen (4-r2 coys.)

(r632-33 'Baudissin's Leibregiment') -34 etc?r63 r Erik Hansson Ulfsparre (4 coys.) -33

etc?r63r Pierre Duverge (4-6 coys.) -34 etc?r632 Jakob Duwall (8 coys.) -33d?r633? Gustav I-lorn (3-6 coys.) -34d?

Dragoons were organised exactly like theinfantry in companies of r50 men. Somecompanies acted independently but most weregrouped into squadrons or regiments of wildlyvarying size. However, these squadrons andregiments were often broken up again, makingunit histories almost impossibly difficult tofollow.

•

15

ably smaller. Taupadel-whose name was oftencorrupted to 'Dubatell'-achieved such a reputationthat when he was captured in 1632 it was said thatWallenstein freed him without ransom in a high­spirited gesture, claiming that Gustavus would bequite unable to continue the campaign withouthim.

Whatever Taupadel's personal skills, dragoonshad indeed become vital to the effective conduct of acampaign thanks to their willingness to dismount todo the tiresome everyday chores disdained by theirsnobbish colleagues in the cavalry. Dragoons wereusually to be found in the vanguard, pathfinding andclearing roads, securing bridges, and generally lub­ricating the motion of the army. In a sense, dragoonswere labourers on horseback. They were too busyelsewhere to fight in the formal battles ofBreitenfeldand Li.itzen.

Weapons and uniforms

Wallhausen, and later authors who copied from him,wrote that since dragoons were merely mountedinfantry they should be armed with half-pikes in thesame proportions as for infantry. There is, however,not a single piece of evidence that Swedish dragoonsever carried pikes, and with the sort of dutiesexpected of them, pikes would only have been ahindrance; it is fairly certain that Swedish dragoonsconsisted only of musketeers.

The dragoon's musket was normally a matchlockweapon, and differed little from that of the infantry,except that it was lighter and did not normally need arest. However, the need for constantly lit match cordsproved inconvenient for off-battlefield duties, andfrom about 1635 the Stockholm Arsenal begansupplying dragoon units with a small proportion ofsnaphaunce muskets (proto-flintlocks).

There are several documented examples of

Mounted jagers

One of Gustavus's more exotic units was a companyofjiigers, called in the Swedish sources Djurskyttar­gameshooters. They are one of the first jiiger unitsever recorded. They were on the military establish­ment as early as 161 I, and served in Polish Prussia in1627. Before the German campaign in 1630 Captain

ils Krak was commissioned to recruit foresters andgamewardens for the company from the Royal estatesin southern Sweden; and to make sure each manprovided himself with a horse (SKA I, 0.20).

------- - ...-- --. - -

clothing issues to dragoon units: Taupadel's squad­ron in 1631 (AOSB 1:6, p.83); Monier's squadron in1632 (SKA III, p.218); and Duverge's regiment inlate 1633 (MR 1633/41). The quantities of cloth werecomparable with the infantry, suggesting uniformgarments of similar cut. Colour was specified onlyonce, in an issue to Arvid Svensson's mercenarydragoon company in late 1635. They were given 'oldblack' piuk cloth for uniforms and stockings­material that had been covering the walls and ceilingsof the widowed queen's apartments since Gustavus'sdeath, and had been taken down in March 1635 andplaced at the disposal of the Royal Wardrobe(WardAccs 1635, item 110 & Kjellberg, P.99).

rest; and the 'bandolier' ofpowder flasks hasvanished. Bandoliers areshown on other pictures ofdragoons but they mayhave proved inconvenientfor mounted use, as thecords would tangle withthe motion ofthc horse.From Wallhausen'sKriegskunst zu Pfcrd(Frankfurt-am-Main,1616).

A pre-Thirty Years' Wardragoon armed with amatchlock musket slungover his shoulder, holdinga length ofsmoulderingmatch cord in his reinhand. He is drcssed as aninI:1ntryman with a clothcoat, and shoes rather thanboots. Two ofGustavus'salleged innovations arealready apparent on thisfigure: the musket has no

16

Beyond the fact that Krak's gamekeepers werepart ofGu ta u 's personal retinue in Germany, littlei known of their activitie . They certainly saw someaction: {8 of them sailed for Germany in July 1630;they numbered 37 in Februar 1632; and only 24 inJune 1633, shortly before being shipped home. Afurther 300 mounted jiigers in three companies wereraised in 1631 by I-lessen-Kassel, Sweden's closestally in the war.

ARTILLERY, Your gullS wil Ii horse ({ nd waggon you tany,

Ours one can on the shoulder carry,From slrang lea Iher Ihem rTJe make,

and when they shoot Ihe earth quakes.'

('Conversation between a Lapp and an Imperialist' ina German news-sheet of 1630/31)

When it comes to Gu tavus's artillery, hismysterious 'leather cannon' always steal the scene.Their tory i but a short chapter in the progresstowards something far more important: the mobilemetal field cannon. This does not mean that some­thing as peculiar as the leather cannon can just bepassed over, however.

Lea ther cannon

It may be a heinous crime to suggest that the leathercannon was not a wedish invention. Even at the timeit \ a linked in eparably with the Swedes: 'What,you strumbling Istromm;ng = herring] eaters, haveyou eaten up all your leather guns for hunger?', calledout one Catholic soldier during a siege in 1631,puzzled by the absence of the Swedes' famouscannon. In fact the leather cannon first saw the lightof day not in Sweden, but in Switzerland.

mathematician, Master Philip Eberhard, re­ceived a licence to de ign leather cannon in Zurich in1622 and tested his first working model there in1623. n ustrian baron, Melchior Wurmprandt,learned Eberhard's secrets, and took them with himto weden. On IS July 1625 in Stockholm he testedthe first Swedish leather cannon.

In the introduction to his Kriegsbiichlein of 1644Lavater, another Zuricher, tried to reclaim theinvention for the Swiss:

'The art a/guns a/leather,Did not from Sweden "ome,

I say it on this ground:It lVas lVith our people long ago,

And by our people found.'

Two other inventors-a German, Ludwig Ripp,and a Scotsman, Robert Scott-also test-shot theirown versions of leather cannon in Stockholm in 1628,but neither of their prototypes were taken up, sinceWurmprandt's pattern had already been put intomass production.

The e er-inquisitive Prussian official IsraelHoppe watched wide-eyed when the first 14 leatherguns-'much talked about but little believed'-wereoff-loaded in Polish Prussia on 9 October 1627. Ofthese, Wurmprandt took two 6-pounders and four 3­pounders to their first action on 13 October at thesiege ofWormditt.

Despite initial successes (see Plate A), the leathercannon did not prove to be a viable weapon. In aletter dated 23 December (1628 or '29) Gustavuswrote abruptly: 'Wurmprandt's work at [his gun­foundry at] Ulfvesund is of no use to us or the Realm,therefore it is our gracious desire that his workceases ... '. Their last recorded use was in the furiouscavalry battle at Honigfelde in June 1629, where tenwere lost to the Poles. No leather guns were taken toGermany in 1630; most remained in Polish Prussiaand were returned to the Stockholm arsenal, where30 of them were listed in inventories in the 1640S.

Regimental cannon

The leather cannon was superseded in 1629 by a .weapon that did not have the same tendency tooverheat and burst-the so called 'regimental' can­non. The barrel of this weapon was made ofbronze­an alloy of copper with tin -called at the time simply'metal'. By using a reduced powder charge it waspossible to lighten the barrel considerably, and it wasfurther shortened to save weight. It was bored toshoot an iron ball of between three and four poundsweight, and so has been known by both these terms;correctly speaking though, it was a '3-pounder'.

It is still not known for certain who designed thefirst regimental gun. The engineer Schildknecht saidthat it was a German Protestant. A German, vonSiegroth, is linked so often with Swedish regimental

17

The only 'leather cannon'in a Swedish collection.This underside view showswhere the leather coveringwas glued and nailedtogether. The barrel itselfwas made ofa thin coppertube bound with wire, cordand canvas. This is theprototype made by LudwigRipp which was test-shotin Stockholm inJal1uary1628, but never went intoproduction. It waspreserved by ChancellorOxenstierna's descendantsat Tida, and is now at theLivrustkammaren inStockholm. (LRK jr69)

The leather cannon waswidely copied in allcorners ofEurope, and a

•great many surVIve,though few are Swedish.Scottish collections alonecontain over 20, mostlymade in the late 1630S andearly '40S byJamesWemyss, a nephew ofanother famous leather­gun maker, Robert Scott.This example, below, fromWarsaw is more likely tobe Swedish than most, andcould be one ofthe tencaptured by the Poles atHonigfelde in 1629. It is,however, only a 1 ~­

pounder, whereas mostSwedish leather guns aredescribed as 3- or 6­pounders. The leathercovering has been removedto reveal several layers ofcanvas. (Muzeum WojskaPolskiego 580#)

~...

guns that he may have been the inventor. There werein fact two von Siegroths, Hans Heinrich (died in the1620S) and his son David Friedrich (died 1647). Bothcame over to Swedish service from Hessen-Kassel inthe 1620S. The first Swedish bronze regimental gunsappeared in 1629, when 'Siegroth' pieces wereproduced and test-shot in Stockholm on 5 May. Bythe end of the year 50 had been manufactured.Further production in Germany for the Swedes hadbegun by 1632.

At Breitenfeld 42 regimental guns were available,so they were handed out six per brigade (three to each'wing' squadron of the brigade). Montecuccoli notedthat each gun required two crew: 'one is appointed toload and fire, the other conducts it by the end of thecarriage, and brings it forwards at the march tempo ofthe infan try. '

Heavier artillery

Early artillery pieces had a bewildering variety ofnames-sakers, culverins, falconets, and manyothers-disguising an even more confusing system ofcalibres. It has been said that Gustavus was the firstto bring order out of this near chaos. The processactually began a good deal earlier: Charles V (Em­peror of the German nation, 1520-1555) reduced thecalibres to seven, though his reform was not adoptedeverywhere. The key date was, however, 1609, whenthe Spanish, largely on the advice of Diego Uffano,reduced the number to only four: 48-, 24-, 12- and 6­pounders. 'It is truly remarkable to have reduced allour guns to these four calibres', wrote Uffano in his1613 manual.

Cannon became known in terms of fractions of

18

,

Table D: Protestant fon:es in Gennany, eady :'\0\ 1632

Notes:(I) Regiments for which recruiting had begunbefore Gustavus arrived in Germany in July1630 .

Swedes .Finns , .

German Mercenaries:

Old ' (1 )regiments ..•ew regiments ..

B .. h . (2)ntis mercenanes .........

Allies:Saxon .Brandenburg .Hessen-Ka el ..Mecklenburg .City Militia .

TOla/(3)

8,000 (5.5%)3,000 (2%)

15,000 (10.5%)65,000 (44.5%)

7,000 (5%)

17,000 (II·S%)6,000 (4%)6,000 (4%)4,000 (2·5%)

C.IS,OOO (10·5%)

146,000 (100%)

(2) If only infantry are counted, there weremore British in Germany at this time thanSwedes.(3) Figures all based on a regiment by regimentanalysis compiled Sveriges Krig, vol. 6 andmany other sources.

It has often been said that Gustavuspermanently increased the size ofarmies. Thisis not strictly correct. Gustavus's army was notso much a 'Swedish army' as an allied armyformed with the contingents of the Protestantprinces of Germany. About half of the1so,ooo-odd men were in garrisons, the restwere divided into field armies of between 3,000and 20,000 men, which were sometimescombined for short periods if battle seemedlikely. Gustavus's own 'field army' wastherefore no larger than those of his

•

contemporanes.

the 48-pounder or 'full cannon': the 24-pounderbecame the 'demi-cannon', the 12-pounder thequarter-cannon', and the 6-pounder the 'eighth­

cannon'. This Spanish system was quickly adopted inFrance and Holland, and the Swedes oon followed

•Ult.

Gustavus went even further: he did not bother tomanufacture the 48-pounder, since the 24-pounderwas almost as good at smashing masonry and at farless cost; and he replaced the 6-pounder with the 3­pounder regimental gun (also called a 'sixteenth­cannon'). His artillery was thus reduced to only threecalibres: 24-, 12-, and 3-pounders. Gustavus de­ployed 12 heavy cannon at Breitenfeld -positionedinitially in threes in front of the centre squadron ofeach front line brigade.

The artillery train

The Swedi h artiller was organised in 1630 into aregiment-like tructure of six companies, though itwas never actually called the artillery 'regiment' as isometimes claimed. One company contained the

regimental pieces, three the heavier guns, one the'fireworkers', and one the miners for siege work. InOctober 1632 the artillery staff of Gustavus's mainfield army alone was estimated at 1,200 men.

Horses and waggons were a permanent part of acentral artillery stable, and did not tend to be hired ona casual basis from civilians as is sometimes thought.Drivers (kuskar) for the regimental guns, one pergun, were already in 1630 on the company strength,though they were transferred later the same year tothe main pool of drivers (nearly 600 strong in 1630).

Each regimental cannon was crewed by a gunner(konstapel) and an assistant (hantlangare); largerpieces had a gunner with two assistants, plus onestyckjunckare (an NCO) shared between two guns.'Commanded musketeers' were borrowed from theinfantry when extra muscle-power was needed.Though the senior ranks and technical experts wereoften foreigners, the ordinary crewmen were mostlySwedes: thus the artillery remained until the end ofthe Thirty Years' War, the most Swedish of the armsofservice.

19

The 3-pounder bronzeregimental gun appearedfor the first time in Swedenin r629, and completelyreplaced the leathercannon before Gustavusset foot in Germany inr630. A shortened barrelreduced the weight to onlyr38kg, which made it lightenough to operatealongside the infantry.Note Gustavus's cypherand the 'wheatshearemblem ofthe Vasa familyon this drawing made inr67r. (After ]akobsson)

-r;; ~ ~r .' .' -', ... ,';' '-",\--,1' e'" . • 'r·.~

-'-'''... ,

IDENTIFICATIONSIGNS

The silk sash or scarf is generally seen as the mainway that armies told each other apart in the ThirtyYears' War. It was, however, an expensive item; andas many military writers of the period noted, it wasreserved primarily for officers and horsemen. Theinfantry, and in Gustavus's impoverished armyprobaply the cavalry too, had to make do withcheaper alternatives.

Fieldwords and fieldsigns

The simplest was the 'field word'-a password,usually a religious phrase- made known to thesoldiers on a day when action seemed likely. Inpractice the same phrases were chosen again andagain. The Swedes, in sturdy Lutheran manner,called for God or Jesus: 'Gott mitt uns!' was used in

~

virtually all the big battles of the 1630S; 'Hilf HerrJesusI' became more popular in the 1640S.

More important was the 'field token' or 'fieldsign'-usually a cheap or improvised item. AtBreitenfeld, the Swedes used 'greene branches intheir hats or helmets' according to the SwedishIntelligencer, so that 'ere night their browes werecrowned as if with victorious Lawrell'. From the late1630S twisted bands of straw worn on the hat and/orleft arm became the undisputed trademark of theSwedish soldier (see Table E). One Swede wrote, inabout 17°0, that the straw fieldsign had been usedsince Gustavus first introduced it at the storming ofRiga in 1621. This has not yet been confirmed in

contemporary sources, and smacks of legend; butwith Gustavus's family badge being the 'wheatsheaP,the symbolic origin at least seems fairly clear.

Scarf colours

Received wisdom has it that the Imperialists wore redscarves and the Swedes blue. Though there is goodevidence for Imperialist red in use by Wallenstein'sarmy from 1632, Gustavus's blue is far less solid. Infact, not a single written reference has yet beendiscovered: no regulatioR~ndno reported sightingson the battlefield.

The idea seems to be based on battle-paintingsand portraits, which are, however, not always reli­able. Battle-painters were mostly Dutch and Flem­ish, and they worked in their home countries wellaway from the theatre of war, and often decades afterthe events they depicted. Gustavus's portraits arequestionable, since most were simply copied fromprints, with colours added from the artist's• • •ImagmatlOn.

Reliable officers' portraits suggest that bluescarves were not the norm during Gustavus's life­time. The 20 portraits at Skokloster, dated1623-1626, show a wide variety of scarf colours. The

1626 Duwall portrait (see MAA 235, PP·36 & 37)shows four captains of the Norrland regiment withorange scarves and four with grey-green ones. In the1630S scarves disappear altogether from Swedishofficer portraits; their absence is so complete that itsuggests that the lack ofa scarf may have been a 'fieldsign' in itself.

Only in portraits from the very end of the ThirtyYears' War-long after Gustavus was dead-do bluescarves appear consistently. Only in 1645 is there

20

written confirmation ofa sort- the Swedes at J ankowused 'blue signs in the standards' -probably strips ofcloth tied at the lance tops, like cravats.

As for the idea that Swedish blue scarves hadgold fringes-equivalent in heraldry to yellow-toreflect the colours of the Swedish flag, this is unlikely:almost all the best quality scarves, no matter whattheir colour, had gold fringes. One German satiricalprint mentions that 'a pretty scarf with gold borders'was every greedy Thirty Years' War officer's greatestdesire.

In this search for blue scarves, we may in any casebe barking up the wrong tree. Military writers, fromMelzo in Antwerp in 161 I through to John Vernon inEngland in 1644, noted that 'every horseman mustweare a scarfe of his GeneralIs Colours'. The scarfcolour was the mark of the army commander; it wasonly beginning to develop into the mark of a nation.

But did Gustavus have his own general's colour?The most likely choices are black and yellow-hislivery colours. Of the scarves made for Gustavusbetween 1619 and 1627 (records have not yet beenfound after 1627), one was silver, one white, one

brown, ahd three black. In 163 I the Yellow RegimentofFoot were issued 80 ells (48 metres) ofblack Naplestaffeta, and Baudissin's Horse Regiment 20 ells of thesame-for officers' clothing, but not specifically forscarves. There is, however, not a hint of black scarvesin other sources. Yellow scarves are worn by theSwedes in several Flemish battle-paintings, but theiruse is also not otherwise confirmed.

The German historian Hoyer wrote in 1797,without quoting his source, that the Swedish colourwas in fact green. Though this has been dismissed bymodern historians, there is actually more evidence forgreen as Gustavus's colour than any other. A paintingdated 1632 of Breitenfeld, by the Frenchman JeanWalter, shows green scarves. At Wittstock in 1636,according to one French news-sheet, the Swedeswore 'small green scarves' around their arms as theirfieldsign. It is also possible that the greenery worn inthe headgear at Breitenfeld was another example ofSwedish green-especially since Gualdo Prioratorecords that Gustavus wore a 'little green feather' inhis hat in that battle (see Plates C & G).

Perhaps the Swedes used all these colours in

Ba.ttleBreitenfeld 16]1

Lutzen 16]2Nordlingen 16]4

Wittstock 16]6

Storm ojLeipzig 1637Capture o/Bautzen 16]9

BreitenJeld II, 1642

JankOI1J 1645

Warsal1J 1656 (against Poles)

Lund /676 (against Danes)

Landskrona 1677 (againstDanes)

FieldsignGreen sprigs inheadgearAny colour but red?Unknown

Small green scarf onarmStraw on armStraw band on leftarmStraw on arm andhatBlue signs onstandardsStraw on arm andhatStraw

Straw

FieldwordGott mit uns!

Gott mit uns!Immanuel Gott mituns!Gott mit uns!

UnknownUnknown

HilfHerr Jesu!

HilfJesus!

Hjiilp ossJesus! (orGud med oss!)Hjiilp Gudh!

Hjiilp Jesus!

SourceIntelligencer,Monro, etc.Intelligencer, etc.O. Fraas (1869)

French news-sheet

KhevenhiillerGerman news-sheet

Chemnitz

Slaget vid Jankow,

P·148J. Carlbom (1906)

Dahlberg's battleplansDahlberg's battleplans

21

TACTICS

from the same woollen cloth used for uniforms, andwere issued by the state. In 1630 the basic colour wasblue with 20% yellow: judging from contemporaryprints this was probably cut as a yellow St. Andrew'scross on a blue background-similar to, but notexactly like the Swedish flag. In 163 I the patternchanged to all yellow; four years later the chroniclerHoppe watched '15 yellow ammunition waggons'draw out of Elbing, the Swedish HQ in PolishPrussia. In the same year (1635) tilts reverted to allblue, and appear to have remained that colour untilthe end of the war (WardAccs 1629, item 319; 1631,item 74; and 1635, item 18).

Gustavus had many influences on the art of war; butone that stands out above the rest is his understand­ing of the use of firepower. He was perhaps the firstgeneral to see that gunpowder weapons were now thesingle most decisive teiilent on the battlefield.

The devastating firepower ofGustavus's infantryand artillery is fairly well known. His infantry usedthe 'salvo' -the discharge of an entire unit's musketsin one or two volleys to produce a terrifying wall oflead. The artillery - especially the regimentalartillery-gave close support to the infantry by firingcanister at point blank range prior to contact. Lt.Col.Henry Muschamp's description of Lumsdaine's (ex­Spens's) Scots at Breitenfeld gives an excellent ideaof how the combination worked:

'First giving fire unto three little field-pieces that Ihad before me, I suffered not my musketeers to give theirvolleys, till I came within pistol-shot of the enemy; atwhich time I gave the order to the three first ranks todischarge at once; and after them the other three: whichdone we fell pell-mell into their ranks, knocking them

front in the correctmanner. The sprays oflea ves worn in the ha t ofthe Livonian and on thesnapsack ofthe Scot areprobably a reference to theSwedish 'fieldsign' used atthe battle ofBreitenfeld in16]1. Note that the 'Lapp'appears to be eating hisfieldsign . .. (AnonymousGerman broadsheet c. 16]1)

'Illustration ofthe strangeand bizarre peoples thatare to be found with theSwedish army'. This Lapp,Livonian (Latvian) andScot are clearly fantasiesdreamed up by a Germanillustrator. The'Schotlander' does,however, have Irishheadgear, and what lookslike a dirk carried at the

Waggon tilt colours

A final clue comes in the colours of the tilts of theartillery's ammunition waggons. These were made

-~-... e-

lue,;":m& ot, "".~/~!amtn TJiicl&" l~ ,i,i, """', illl ~c2nxib'uIzfn\ . .. ~ . ..

turn? In July 1562 and July 1564, King Erik XIV hadfirst ordered that the Swedish army's scarves shouldby 'yellow, since the cross that divides our Arms, isalso yellow'; but then in September 1564 he gave theorder to use red ones; in August 1565, green ones; andin January 1568, red ones again (R. Mejborg, Antiq­varisk Tidskrift for Sverige 9:3, P.33).

It may be that blue, black, yellow and green wereall the Swedish colour for a time; it may be that eachallied German prince and Swedish general used hisown personal colours for his own troops; it may bethat there was a complete free-for-all, and everyonewore whatever colour he pleased. The subject clearlystill needs more research. The most coherent thingthat can be said at present is that from 1632 to about1635 the Swedes avoided red scarves because that wasthe acknowledged Imperialist colour. If they didadopt a single colour it was probably not on a scarf,but rather on a strip of cloth, worn on the hat or arm.

22

Erik Soop (1592-1632),colonel ofthe Viistgotacavalry, in a portrait dated1629. He wears a buffcoatwith the broad decorativebands favoured in the1620S, and carries a cane ashis symbol ofcommand.The Viistgota cavalry hadbeen issued in 1628 withgreen standards, so it is

perhaps more than acoincidence that his scarf(sash) is a green-bluecolour. In general theSwedes do not seem toha ve used a single scarfcolour in the 1620S.(Gripsholm 931)

Colonel Erik Soop, in asecond portrait probablypainted posthumously andattributed to the courtpainter Cornelius Arendtz.Fashion has changedconsiderably in these fewyears. Plain buffcoats arenow the norm, edged herewith far more discrete goldthread borders. The frontis now laced up in a seriesoffalling bows, eachending in ornamental

metal 'points'. The ornatelace neck band has grownto ridiculous proportions,prior to its replacement inthe 1640S by the simple andfunctional cravat. Theheavily embroideredbaldric and sleeves arenow the main symbols ofrank. As in most 1630SSwedish oflicerportraits,Soop does not wear a sash.(Private Swedishcollection, photo SPA)

•

down with the stock of the musket and our swords.'(Swedish Discipline 3, P·24)

As for improvements in the firepower of cavalry,at first thc exact opposite seems to be the case.Gustavus minimised the use of firepower by orderingthem to charge into contact.

The 'Abolition' of the Caracole

Chemnitz describes Gustavus's instruction to hiscavalry in some detail: 'Only thefirst or at most thefirsttlVO ranks, nJhen near enough to see the whites of theenemy's eyes, Ivere to give fire, then to reach for theirswords; the last rank however was to attack withoutshooting but with swords drawn, and to keep both pistols(or in the front ranks, one) in reserve for the melee.'

This, according to most modern authorities, wasGustavus's key tactical reform. It amounted, theysay, to aboliti~ of the 'caracole' (literally 'snail')­the convoluted <!h·d.ineffective skirmishing by whicheach rank shot off its pistols and then retired to exposea fresh rank which did the same. The wild, unre­strained charge of Gustavus cavalry-copied fromthe ferocious Polish 'winged' lancers-is said to havecarried all the German cavalry before it, and intro­duced to the West a new period of true cavalrywarfare. Though there is an element of truth in allthis, in fact, by 1630 the Germans do not seem to havebeen nearly as addicted to the caracole as is usuallyclaimed.

Monro describes Tilly's cuirassiers at Breiten-

23

The victory at Rain or'Crossing ofthe Lech' inApril r632, which was wonwith Gustavus's artilleryalone. Gustavus shotTilly's anny to pieces withhis eighteen 24-poundersand 54 lighter guns, beforecrossing the River Lech tofinish them off. NoteTilly's wrecked guns,which show that counter­battery fire was already awell established tactic.(UUB)

feld 'charging furiously' at the Swedish horse. AtLutzen, the Imperialist Colonel Piccolomini braggedthat his cuirassier regiment had 'charged eight timesin succession'. During one of these charges Syden­ham Poyntz (himself an Imperial cuirassier) recordshow Piccolomini 'made a wonderful breach throughthe king's Finlanders'.

Far from being designed purely for the caracole,the pistol-armed cuirassier was the most powerfulattack force on the Thirty Years' War battlefield. Bigmen on big horses, they formed up in dense blocksknee-to-knee, usually six to 12 deep. When theyattacked they paused only for the front rank or two tofire their pistols, just enough to cause some disorderin the enemy ranks, and then the dense mass crashedits way clean through anything that stood in its way.

That, at least, was the theory, and the practicefollowed by better units like Piccolomini's. Theproblem was that many German mercenaries, whohad a valuable horse and promising career at stake,were not prepared to risk the shock of contact.Instead they simply shot off their pistols in thedirection of the foe, and then, considering their duty

24

done, veered off to the rear to let the next rank takethe risk. Charges were often degenerating intocaracoles.

Hoppe wrote that in September 1628 Baudissin'srecently arrived regiment had 'little lust (as is thecurrent German fashion) to fight'. It was Gustavuswho remedied this ailment, by strictly enforcing thecharge. In this he was indeed to an extent copying thePoles, who had~wer firearms and were keener to getinto contact. He may also have been influenced byshortages of pistols among his own cavalry. But thisreally was as far as Gustavus's great innovationwent-it was not a particularly radical move.

The 'caracole' was almost as out-of-date as thetercio (which, despite some modern historians, wasnot used at Lutzen or at Breitenfeld). By the 1630S

the word 'caracole' was used in practice mainly todenote an equestrian half-turn. The Imperialists hadno need to re-Iearn the cavalry charge from Gustavus,merely to be reminded.

At Breitenfeld, when faced by Imperialist cuiras­siers on their 'heavy stallions', the Swedes on theirsmall horses were completely outclassed, and Gus-

LEFT WING(Bernhard of Weimar)

INFANTRY FRONT(Nils Brahe)

RIGHT WING(Gustavus Adolphus)

0.1 I_O_O.I=:::JI.IC=:JI..L ......Bernhard's Blue

Brigade Brigade

-L.YellowBrigade

-L.~_D.I=I.O_I I.~Swedish Smlliand Stllihandske'sBrigade Cavalry Finns

o o _10 -I IC=:JI'-Mitzlaff'sBrigade

• 1st line reserve(Henderson)

INFANTRY RESERVE(Knyphausen)

...... "'1'-Thurn's Knyphausen's Duke Wilhelm'sBrigade Brigade Brigade

I o D o o

Cavalry Squadron

_ Infantry Brigade

• Musketeer Detachment

2nd line reserve(Ohm)

o 1000 feet

I----~I--"o 400 metres

Com.bination of arm.s

Gustavus hadgot.ten rid of his ...arquebusiers in theI620S, but their firepower was also never reallyabolished: merely replac~d by something far moreeffective-musketeers on foot working in close co­operation with the cavalry. These musketeers wereplaced in the intervals between each cavalry squad-

tavus knew that in a straight fight he did not stand achance. Before the battle he advised his cavalry onspecial tactics. It was pointless, he said, for them to

aim at the heavily armoured cuirassier's ribcages:'they need only give the horse a deep thrust with thesword, twist broadly with it and rip open the wound;in this way horse and man would be quickly bowledover, and beaten just the same' (Chemnitz I, 206).

At Liitzen, too, the fear of cuirassiers wasforemost in Gustavus's thoughts when he orderedStalhandske, the colonel of his fierce Finnish cavalry,to 'charge me those blacke fellows [cuirassiers]soundly: for they are the men that will undo us ... '(Sw.Intel1.3, P.I33). We need hardly add that Gus­tavus was eventually killed by those very cuirassiers.

The secret of Gustavus's apparent success withcavalry was not the abolition of the caracole. In fact,far from reducing cavalry firepower he was merelyinsisting that pistols were used at their most effectiverange-ten yards, or preferably less.

The Swedish battle orderat Liitzen, (6 November(6]2. The infantry isdeployed mostly in thecentre, in eight 'Swedishbrigades', while thecavalry are on the wings, intactical 'squadrons' roo to400 men strong. Betweeneach squadron is adetachment of200

musketeers with tworegimental ]-pounderguns. A single body ofmusketeers and one ofca valry form reserves in

the centre. Thedeployment ofthe heavierartillery was delayed onthe day ofthe battle, butthey are marked here asthey would normally havebeen placed-at the headsofthe infantry brigades.The basic structure ofGustavus's battle orderwas copied in virtually allthe larger pitched-battlesfought in Western Europefor the remainder ofthe(7th century.

The Swedish battleformation at the minorbattle ofPfaD"enhofen inAlsace, ro August (6]]. Thecavalry wings are 'lined'(in contemporary jargon)with detachments ofmusketeers. The centreconsist of/ive infantrybrigades arrangedchequenvise. The interval

between these was usuallyset, according to Monro, sothat a squadron ofhorse'might march out in grossebetwixt the Briggads'; it isinteresting here that thereactually are cavalrysquadrons in the intervals.(From TheatrUITIEuropaeum, III)

33

CONCLUSIONSWe are now in a position to answer, at least partly(though not comprehensively), the question posed atthe beginning of Volume I: what exactly did Gus­tavus, or men working in his name, actually invent?

It is easier at first to say what he did not invent.Foremost is the military uniform, which is mucholder than generally believed. The shortening of thepike to I I feet was a myth created by the ReverendWalter Harte, in his 1759 biography of Gustavus,when he mistook an officer's partisan for a pike. Theabolition of the musketeer's bandoliers to be replacedby newly invented paper cartridges are again bothfallacies courtesy of the Reverend Harte. The com­bined swinesfeather and musket rest was probablyinvented in the 1640S or '50S. The first all-musketeerregiments were in fact incomplete units still beingrecruited or were freshly out of garrisons. Gustavusdid not cause a permanent increase in the size ofstanding armies, which had to await improvements inmilitary logistics first made by the French in the1670S.

Many innovations occurred elsewhere in Europeas consequences of the Thirty Years' War and weretaken up by Gustavus's army. The lightened musketand muskets without rests were both used to someextent, but not universally. A decrease (or alterna­tively even an increase) of the proportion of pikemenin foot regiments has been credited to Gustavus,mostly due to misunderstandings of the composition

•

ron, in bodies of 50 to 200 men. They fired salvos atpoint blank range, in an attempt to break up attackingImperialist cavalry, who were then counterchargedby Swedish horse. Such musketeer detachments 'caneasily push off the enemy's attacking cavalry and keepthem back', wrote the Pomeranian veteran Schild­knecht (iii, 186).

Gustavus used this tactic to great effect in thePolish compaigns, breaking up the charges of the'winged' hussars before they could get near enough todo any damage with their five-metre-Iong lances. InGermany, too, he rarely fought even a minor actionwithout musketeers supporting his cavalry.

But musketeer detachments were not the idealsolution. They reduced the cavalry to the speed of theinfantry, and so removed their main advantage­mobility. Also, if the friendly cavalry were pushedback, the musketeers were left completely unpro­tected. Schildknecht notes that at Breitenfeld themusketeer detachments suffered crippling casualties;and that to prevent a repeat at Liitzen, Gustavus tookthe extraordinary measure of giving out two regi­mental guns per detachment. But even with thisconcentration of firepower, Gustavus's cavalry atLiitzen still took a hammering. 'Our horse did butpoorely', wrote Fleetwood. Without the firepowerthey would probably have stood no chance at all.

Gustavus's cavalry is regularly equated withPrince Rupert's impetuous cavaliers, who (it is said,with little proof) charged in the new, aggressive'Swedish style' during the English Civil War. Itwould probably be more accurate to compare themwith Cromwell's Ironsides: puritanical, solid, andfirmly disciplined, but hardly wild.

34

Pistols were the principalweapon ofcavalry in this

period. The complexity ofthe wheeJlock mechanismmeant that their cost washigh: a pair with holsterscost between 5 and IO

Riksdaler-slightlymorethan a ca valryman 'sarmour with helmet. Fewann uries in Sweden wereable to anufacturewheeJlock and most hadto be imp~}ted. This pair,however, bears the anchorproofmark thought tobelong to the Norrtiiljefactory (founded 1622).'Short' pistols like these,with barrels of34.4cmlength, were slowlyreplacing the older oneswith barrels of6ocm andmore. (LRK 1591 & 1592)

,.. ':: .. ;;::; ;;:;;;:.::I:"::': ;:::: :j!;I"

Napoleon believed that seven great captains hadgone before him: Alexander, Hannibal, JuliusCaesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene andFrederick the Great. In Napoleon ~ist, Gustavus isthe first great captain of the modern 'era; the sixteencenturies between Caesar and him are a blank. This iswhy the centuries of slow evolutionary change havebeen forgotten; this is why Gustavus is said to havecaused a military revolution; this is why he is creditedwith so many innovations. Gustavus Adolphus wassimply the first identifiable great captain of themodern age.

before a stunned audience in Germany, they were anintegral part of the developments of the Thirty Years'War. It should not be forgotten that Gustavus'sGerman mercenaries had nearly all fought in theearlier phases of the War, and provided a vast base ofknowledge for Gustavus to work from.

It should also not be forgotten that Gustavus wasperhaps even more important as a political andreligious figure. He brought Sweden out of the DarkAges and turned it into a first rate superpower. InGermany he united the factious princes and dukes,and was, in a very real sense, the saviour ofProtestantism. Though many ofGustavus's technical'innovations' are dubious at best, his status as one ofthe most influential men of European history is not

•

open to questIOn.

of the Swedish brigade, but this was a universaltrend.

Gustavus made several innovations almost byaccident, by transforming defects into virtues. Thereduction of cavalry to three deep was probablyinitially due to a shortage of men. The lightening ofcavalry armour and the introduction of the light'cuirassier' were due to shortages ofarmour. Relianceon the sword rather than pistols and arquebuses, andin con equence the (greatly overstated) reintroduc­tion of the cavalry charge, were due largely to ashortage of at first arquebuses and later pistols.

Some innovations were not actually made byGustavus, but only brought by him to their max­imum effect: the swinesfeather (without musket­rest); reduction of infantry formations to six deep;and the smaller, more flexible infantry formations.

Finally come conscious innovations, some ofwhich may have had previous histories but were sodramatically transformed by Gustavus that it wouldbe pedantic to take away the credit. These include anational army based on conscription of the peasantry(but not the full indelningsverk-which was a lateraddition), and the (ultimately unsuccessful) Swedishbrigade. Regimental artillery, which followed natur­ally after earlier abortive experiments with leathercannon; commanded musketeers mixed among thecavalry; and salvo fire, are all examples of the use ofoverwhelming firepower, which in the final reckoningmust rate as the single key to Gustavus's success onthe battlefield.

Gustavus's innovations have long been seenoutside of the context in which they belong: Protest­ant Germany. Far from being dreamed up in a remoteBaltic war against Poland, and then demonstrated

A German print ofthebattle ofLiitzen. Gustavusis hit at the head ofcheSmaland cavalry whilePappenheim lies alreadymortally wounded on theground. The Smalandhorsemen

('Schmallendische Reiiter')mostly wear felt hatsrather chan helmets, andfew ha ve armour; theImperialist cuirassiers arealtogether better equipped.The main weapon ofbotharmies is the pistol. (UUB)

3S

reign. In Jhe foreground isthe ITl::fu"h ofthe VistuJaandthe lighthouse fortnear which the action inPlate A took place. Fromthe autograph album ofHeinrich von BohITle vonNamslau, entry made inDanzig by Schonfeldt inr633. (PAN Library,K6rnik, Poland, M5.r508)

Gustavus's efforts to turnSweden into a naval powerwere at least as importantas his reform oflandforces; the ill-fatedwarship Wasa is only thebest known ofhis schemes.The action shown here,against the Polish fleet offOliva near Gdansk on 28November r627, was thelargest naval battle ofhis

A2: Gunner (Konstapel)Artillerymen were sometimes issued with clothingbut the colours were seldom specified. A rare examplewas in 1628, when the artillery master Mats Pedersonand a clerk between them received 10 ells (6 metres)of black broadcloth and I ell of black brocade(WardAces 1628, item 63). It is not certain howtypical this was, but dark colours would obviously bethe most practical for men handling gunpowder.

This gunner, blowing on a linstock, is recon­structed in clothing from the warship Wasa whichsank in August 1628, less than two months after theVistula mouth action. The most complete garmentrecovered was a small waisted jacket (find numberW7883e) made from good quality black cloth. Itclearly belonged to an officer or technical member ofthe crew, and is perhaps appropriate for a seniorgunner. A number of black broad-brimmed felt hats,and several pairs ofsimple tall boots, were also found.

A): Artillery driver (Kuskar)This figure-with his fur hat and particularly shortjacket-is based on a Swedish regimental gun driveron a print of the battle of Breitenfeld. The mainfailing of the leather cannon was that the thin copperbarrel was covered in heat-insulating canvas andleather, so that in prolonged use it quickly overheated

trail carriage, without any metal fittings. Gustavus'sbronze regimental guns seem also to have beenmounted on lightened standard carriages: severalminiature models from the 1630S survive, as doseveral full-sized examples from later in the century.The cartridges in the foreground are based onsurviving examples at Skokloster. Cartridges areknown to have been in use in the mid-16th century(and possibly in the late 15th) and were certainly notinvented by Gustavus.

.---

'-

.-- -

--

, .•• •. ... ... ... -

",,<+-;..,' -

",

-". ~

-

-

••

AI: Leather cannonThough there are many surviving leather guns inEuropean collections that are said to be 'Swedish',none of the originals made by Wurmprandt have yetbeen identified. We use contemporary drawings andRipp's prototype barrel for this reconstruction.

Gun-carriages pose an even greater problem,though Hoppe's description of a Wurmprandt gun in1627 suggests that they were fairly flimsy: 'Itscarriage was made from simple panels without asingle [metal] fitting, and its wheels were like on thesmallest "Kalesse" or little waggon.' Only onecontemporary carriage survives, on a Danish minia­ture leather gun at the Tejhusmuseum in Copenha­gen. It is a scaled-down version of the standard split-

A: Leather cannon: the Vistula mouth action,Poland, I628On the night of 5/6 July 1628 Gustavus surprised sixPolish ships at anchor in the Vistula estuary near theriver mouth (Wisloujscie, Weichselmiinde). ThePoles had considered this marshy area impassable toartillery, and were caught off guard when Gustavusopened fire at dawn with two metal pieces and eightleather cannon. The Tiger blew up when a pre-heated'glowing shot' hit her magazines; the explosiondamaged the Ritter St. Georg and the Konig David,causing the first to run aground. The Konig David­which was hit by more than 70 cannonballs-barelymade it upstream with the other surviving ships tothe safety of Danzig. This was without doubt themost remarkable feat of Gustavus's leather cannon.

THEP

36

based on a contemporary print (reproduced else­where in this book). He seems to have found analternative to the cumbersome bandolier with itswooden flasks-perhaps a cartridge pouch of the typeused by cavalry.

B2: Unmounted dragoonMany dragoons did not have horses, even long afterthey were levied. In January r63r less than half ofTaupadel's dragoon squadron were mounted; andmore than half of Kagg's dragoons were still 'unrid­den' in late r632. It is likely that John Henderson's228 musketeers who formed the infantry reserve forthe front line at Liitzen had originally been levied asdragoons, but never received horses at all.

The dragoon pictured here has finally obtained ahorse, but only after a long period of service on foot:Arvid Svensson's dragoons were 'completelybarefoot' before they were issued the black cloth forstockings mentioned earlier. He has added a sling to

and wore out or burst. The ready supply of coolingwater in the nearby Vistula may account for theweapon's unusual success in this action.

A4: Gustavus AdolphusGustavus's simple and modest taste in clothing wasoften commented upon. One eyewitness remarkedthat he was 'Meanely accoutred in apparell, withoutany pompous or vaine-glorious shew'; and that 'Hisofficers in their clothing were dressed in far morestately manner than him'. We base his dress on the (intruth slightly earlier) 'Dirschau' clothing of r627.The tailor's accounts survive for this or a very similarreplacement outfit (MR r628/36 f.32). The accountsalso show that most of the scarves (sashes) made forGustavus were black-one of his livery colours­rather than the blue shown on dubious portraits.

B: Mounted infantryBI: DragoonDragoons moved on horseback but fought on foot.The quality of their horses-called 'nags' or 'bidets'by contemporaries-was too poor to allow them tofight on equal terms with cavalry. In outwardappearance dragoons were almost indistinguishablefrom infantry; they even wore shoes rather than bootsand spurs, since-as Wallhausen noted-thesewould only impede their movement on foot. Inevit­ably, though, as a campaign progressed, dragoonsaffected the 'look' of cavalrymen. This dragoon is

I ,

\

"""""'---- --- - ::::-",;;

Military types inGermany. Theaccompanying text (notshown here) does notidentify them any further.No. I, judging from hisshoes and light firearm,must be a dragoon; no. 2

and no. 4 are cavalrymenor officers, to judge fromtheir boots; the partisanand shoes ofno. 3 suggestan infantry officer; and

'~--- .._----~

+-

no. 5 is an ordinarymusketeer. Note that onlyofficers and cavalrymenwear buffcoats: thedragoon (no. I) andmusketeer (no. 5) haveunwaisted cloth jackets.The poorer men also havesimple feathers, ratherthan expensive plumeswhich were favoured byoRicers. (AnonymousGerman broadside, c.1635)

IGl- -- - _. - _._--

. I

III

, ..

37

his light matchlock musket to adapt it for mounteduse, in the same ad hoc manner shown by WilhelmDilich in his Kriegsbuch.

people, many with long beards, all dressed in blue­they looked very fierce'. It is tempting to suggest thatthese were none other than Krak's hardy Swedishwoodsmen in their new blue uniforms.

B3: Mounted jager, Nils Krak's'gameshooters ,Krak's gameshooters were a small elite body ofmounted Swedish marksmen that followed Gustavusin Germany. They were issued by the state withsmall-bore hunting muskets, which may have beenrifled and were clearly ideal sniping weapons.

The gameshooters were regularly clothed by theRoyal Wardrobe: in February r632, 34 men wereeach given just under 8 ells (about 4.5 metres) of bluecloth. Only 36 buttons were supplied per man,probably too few for a casack (WardAccs r632, item45). Hats were not issued specifically, so we add a'montero', which could have been made out of thecloth issue. The montero was just coming intofashion in Germany in r630, and on one Germanprint is de cribed as an 'Engeliindischen Nebelhauben'('English foghat'). In cold weather the upper peakcould be pulled down, converting it into somethinglike a balaclava. It became particularly favoured byofficers and hunters.

On 8 May r632 Sebastian Dehner ofRothenburgob der Tauber noted that: 'A company of [Swedish]horsemen arrived from Bibert-very large stately

The main weapons ofKrak's sharpshooters,which were issued by thescate, were huntinggunscalled fOgelbossor­fowling pieces-orSmalands bossor, aftertheir main place ofmanufacture. These weresmall bore weapons ofonly

8mm to wmnl calibre(compared with aboutI9mm for muskets), fittedwith snaphaunce locks(proto-flintlocks), andusually rifled. ThisSm:Hand rifle has boneinlay and dates from theearly or mid-I7th century.(Livrustkammaren)

C: 'Barbarians from the North ': Finns andLivoniansSome central and southern Europeans sawGustavus's landings in Germany as an invasion ofpagan northern savages. Among the 'barbarian'contingents singled out were the Livonians (modernLatvians) and the Finns, both of which were con­fused with the magic-casting Lapps. In fact theLivonians (largely descendants of the TeutonicOrder) were as civilised as any continental Germans,and provided Gustavus with some of his best cavalry.

CI: The traditional cuirassier: Aderkas'sLivoniansThe Swedes raised a number of mercenary cuiras­siers in Livonia in the early r620s; Gustavus's first'Lifecompany' of cuirassiers contained manyLivonians and was commanded by one-CaptainJorgen Aderkas (or Adrikas). This was one of the fewcuirassier units to go to Germany, where it wascombined with four other Livonian companies underFabian Aderkas.

Cuirassier equipment was bought largely fromsuppliers in the Low Countries, especially Louis DeGeer. The Swedes found, however, that it neededmodifying for the Baltic theatre. In r622/23, DeGeer's agent noted that the Swedes would not acceptDutch-pattern cuirassier armour with permanentlyattached cuisses (thigh guards), as they wanted to beable to remove them if the rider had to fight on foot.Again, in r627 Jakob de la Gardie wrote to De Geer

38

from Riga ordering for a company of cuirassiers '100good armours ... with a good pot and not a closedhelmet, shot proof for a pistol' (both quoted byDahlgren, I, P.14S). This cuirassier we show in fullthree-quarter armour with detachable cuisses, butstill with the old style 'closed helmet'.

shown here, or war-hammers. Better equipped Finnsin the early period would probably have worn Polish­style helmets as Plate F2. A comment by the Frenchambassador's secretary, Ogier, perhaps best sums upthe Eastern character of Finnish cavalry: 'TheSwedes have the Finns, as the Poles have the Tatars'.

C3: Finnish cavalryman (Hackapell):Stalhandske's RegimentMuch of the savagery of the Finns seems to havecome from over the border in Russia. Other Easterntraits were lightness and mobility, so that Finns oftenacted as light cavalry: at Breitenfeld, for example,during the advance to contact, 'the King sent beforecertaine troupes of his Finnes, being of his bestCavallerie for Discoverie' (London PRO, SP9S!3!f.126). The Finns (and indeed Swedes and Germanmercenary cavalry, too) were sometimes recordedwith Eastern weapons-such as the Polish sabre

Cz: The 'Swedish' cuirassier-Tott'sRegimentFull cuirassier armour was both heavy and uncom­fortable, especially on a long, hot, summer campaign.The more practical open-faced 'pot' -usually inHungarian style as here-replaced the claustro­phobic 'closed' helmet. The troops themselves seemto have discarded some of their armour unofficially.Before long all that was left was effectively the armourof the arquebusier or 'light horseman' -a back- andbreastpla teo

Like many other generals' bodyguards, Tott'slife company received an issue of Dusinken cloth earlyin 1631 (about 3.7 ells per man), but the colour wasnot specified (Wardrobe accounts 1631, item 205).The black colour of the jacket here is speculative.Tott's life company seems to have contained a highproportion of Finns-survivors of the time whenTott was 'Colonel of all the Finnish cavalry'.

The standards of'HisRoyal Majesty ofSweden'sRed Life Regiment'. Theybelong almost certainly tothe Vppland cavalryregiment-the 'burningmountains' emblem onone ofthe flags is the armsofViistma.nland, a districtthat supplied cavalry tothat regiment. The borders

clearly represent fringes.Watercolours fromReginbaldus Mohner'smanuscript chronicle onthe Swedish Occupation ofAugsburg, 1632-35,Triennium Sueco­Augustanum. (Archiv desBischoflichen Ordinariat,Augsburg)

D: Cavalry cornetsEach company of a cavalry regiment had its ownstandard, which by the late 1620S was called a cornet(Swedish and German Kornett). The cornet wasusually between 50 and 70cm wide and aboutso-sscm high-only hth the size of an infantrycolour-and was edged with a dense fringe of finethread. It was carried on an old-fashioned lookingfluted lance, which was often painted. The flag itselfwas made from a single piece of patterned damasksilk, sometimes cheaper plain satin, doubled aroundthe lance. Decorations were painted on or appliedwith gold leaf, more rarely embroidered. The flags inthese two plates are all reconstructed from thewatercolours in Mohner's manuscript chronicle.

Dr: General Baner's 'Life Regiment'Johan Baner was authorised to raise a life company ofmercenary cavalry only a few weeks after Gustavuslanded in Germany. Like many other life companiesthis was expanded to a full Leibregiment in 1632.Mohner shows four standards of the regiment, allwith the same crowned cypher: 'GAKVS' (GustavusAdolphus Konig von Schweden). Two are identicalto the one shown here; the third has plain bluefringes; the fourth, probably the colonel's, has a whitefield, white fringes, and white tassels.

39

(

~"'4rl.

~"er·('3.

,~

~.A~

~-. ... 'I&Uf

DS: Duke Wilhelm ofWeimar's 'LifeRegiment'After Breitenfeld, Duke Wilhelm of Sachsen­Weimar was appointed second in command of allSwedish forces in Germany. The monogram 'HWzS'(Herzog Wilhelm zu Sachsen) indicates that thoughtechnically part of the Swedish army, his troops owedtheir allegiance to him rather than to Gustavus.Mohner shows three identical green cornets and onewhite one. The regiment in fact had 12 companies,but at Liitzen fielded only 120 men: Duke Wilhelmclearly was not nearly as charismatic as his youngerbrother Bernhard.

D3: King's German 'Life Regiment'During the Polish campaigns Gustavus had main­tained at first a company and then an ad hoc squadronof mercenary cuirassiers as his 'Lifeguard of Horse'.In 1630 these companies and others, including fourraised in Stralsund, were combined under the CountofOrtenburg to become the King's 'Life Regiment ofHorse'. Ortenburg died in June 1631, and this titlepassed to what appears to be an entirely different unitbrought into Swedish service after Breitenfeld byDuke Bernhard of Weimar. Mohner painted the flagsof 'His Royal Majesty's Leib Regiment' in Augsburgin April 1632. When Bernhard made a name forhimself in his own right, the unit became knowninstead as Duke Bernhard's Leibregiment. It was thestrongest regiment at Liitzen, fielding around 500horsemen.

••

D4: Ohm'sRegimentOhm's (ex-Streiff's) regiment was one of Gustavus'soldest cavalry regiments and served in nearly all hisbattles-hence the wear and tear to some of itsstandards. The intact ones probably belong to com­panies raised in summer 1631 to strengthen the unitfrom squadron to regiment. The sun on the all-whitestandard clearly represents the colonel; the moon onanother, probably the lieutenant-colonel. Receiptshave so far been found only for 33 books of gold leafto decorate the flags, inJuly 1631. Mohner shows twoidentical versions of the cornet with a double ring of

leaves.

Dz: Uppland Cavalry Regimentative Swedish cavalry companies were first grouped

into regiments in 1627, and began to receive cornetswith fields of a single regimental colour in thefollowing year. The Uppland cavalry was issued onered cornet in 1628 (to match a red cornet issued in1627), and four more (made from 2.5 ells each of reddamask) in June 1629. However, only in June 1631,shortly before departing for Germany, did theregiment receive 24 books of gold leaf and 8 of silverleaf for decorating these cornets (State trophy collec­tion archive). Mohner calls this regiment the King's'Red Life Regiment of Horse', clearly a reference tocornet colour. This colour name, however, is analmost unique example: unlike the infantry, Swedishcavalry were not normally known by colour names.

40

EI-EJ: Dragoon flagsThe typical wedish dragoon guidon contained 7 to 9ells (4.2 to 5.6 metres) of damask silk. When doubledand cut with two tails this gives dimensions slightlyover 1 metre in the hoist by 1.4 to 1.8 metres in the fly.

El: Field-Marshal Gusta v Horn's DragoonRegimentHorn's dragoon regiment, like many other dragonunits, has left little trace in the records. It is firstmentioned with three companies in 1633/34, and wasix companies strong by the battle of ordlingen in

September 1634, where Horn was captured. Mohnernotes above his watercolours that the regiment hadtwo flag of the brick-red type and three of the yellow.This lack of uniformity is partly due to the sizeincrease, but is also a sign of the rather temporarynature of many dragoon units.

when Rome's most valuable possession was thrownin. Curtius, clearly not a modest man, immediatelyjumped in, and the chasm duly closed, leaving apond, the Lacus Curtius, in its place. The reference toself-sacrifice for the greater good made this afavourite flag emblem.

The proprietor of this company was Han Georgaus dem Winckel, who was also colonel of the OldBlue' Regiment of Foot. It is possible that this is theflag of a company of that regiment which he hasconverted to dragoons. Another such company ofconverted dragoons of the Yellow Regiment arerecorded under Major Buraeus in Augsburg in April1633 (Mankell, p. 179). With further recruitmentthey could conceivably have become part of Horn'sdragoon regiment-accounting for the ad hoc 'con­version' on the yellow flags of Horn's regiment inplate EI.

E3: Colonel Winckel's Dragoon Company,16J5The de ign on this guidon is based on the story of themythical Marcus Curtius. According to legend, asteaming chasm had opened in the Roman Forum,and the seers had declared that it would only close

Ez: HoltzmiilJer's Dragoon CompanyCaptain Gottfried Holtzmiiller was commissioned toraise a company of 150 dragoons in August 1631. Hiscompany appears in the records briefly in 1631,di appears for nearly two years, and then re-appearsin Horn's army in 1633. In the intervening period ithad probably belonged to one of the larger regiments.The griffon-like animal could be Mohner' interpret­ation of what is in fact a dragon. It has often beenuggested that dragoons got their name originally

from dragons depicted on their standards. Therever e i probably true-dragon devices were usedbecau e of the chance similarity of the words.

Dragoon flags fromll'fohner's chronicle.Dragoons were still arelatively new troop type,and their flags varied indesign. Mohner describesthese as (from top left) ofCaptain Schmidt'scompany 'which waslodged in our monastery[in Augsbur:g-] '; Colonel

Winckel's 'which marchedout with him' (when hesurrendered Augsburg inr63S); three Wiirttemberg(militia) companies;Captain Holzmiller's; 'anunknown captain's flag';and five flags of 'GeneralFieldmarshal GustavHorn's Reginlent'.

£4-£6: Other mercenary cavalry regiments£4: Schaffmann's Cavalry RegimentSchaffmann was one of several Bohemian exiles, whohad lost their lands at the beginning of the ThirtyYears' War and served Gustavus in the hope ofgetting them back. His regiment was made up largelyofCzechs and Silesians. The designs are of the t pical'emblem' type, which were normally accompanied bymottos, but the e have probably been omitted byMohner.

£5: Duke Ernst ofWeimar's Life RegimentThis solitary flag is the only one shown by Mohnerfor a regiment which in fact had eight companies.Duke Ernst was the youngest of the three Weimarbrothers.

£6: General Tott's Cavalry Regiment'A fierce man' is how the Srvedish Intelligencerdescribes Ake Tott, and from these flags it is easy tosee why. The skulls are a canting play on Tott'ssurname, tot being the German for 'dead'. Tott'sregiment was present at Breitenfeld, and also atLiitzen though under a new colonel, Karberg.Twelve cornets were issued in Germany in February1632: each one having 2~ ells (I. 5 metres) of blackdamask, 4~ ounces of half yellow/half black fringe,plus a cord with tassels (WardAccs 1632, item 108).Mohner, inexplicably, shows all black fringes.

41

---

F: The Final Charge: Liitzen, r6J2The circumstances of Gustavus's death at Liitzenhave long been obscured by the thick mist and smokethat cloaked the battlefield. The following recon­struction is based only on eyewitness testimonies.

The fateful events began when Gustavus person­ally led the Smaland cavalry forward against Gotz'sand Piccolomini's Imperial cuirassier regimentswhich were attacking the Swedish infantry centre.During the attack Gustavus was hit above the leftelbow by a bullet, which broke his left arm 'com­pletely in two'. The cavalry continued forwardwithout him, while he dismounted and had his armbound. Gustavus then remounted and may haveattempted to return to the fray, but delayed shock gotthe better of him. His stablemaster Schulenburg tookhis horse's reins and began to guide him back to theSwedish lines.

In the mist, the royal party numbering about sixpersons ran into further Imperial cuirassiers. Theytried to dash for safety, but the cuirassiers gave chase.Gustavus's personal bodyguard Anders Jonsson wascut down; Gustavus himself was shot in the back andtook several sword thrusts through the body. Hispage Leublfing saw him fall from his horse and,though wounded himself, turned back and attemptedto give him his own mount; but the cuirassiers weretoo many, and the survivors scattered. At this point

42

Gustavus's escort duringhis entry to Nuremberg inMarch I632. Thoughidentified in

•accompanYIng text asdragoons, they appear tobe dressed as ca valry,complete with buffcoatsand slashed cloth sleeves.This may be an error,though dragoons didinevitably imitate thedress ofca valry. Their flag,a 'blood red cornet,painted with a death'shead lying on two bonescrosswise, and also adragon' aroused quite astir at the time. It may be aconfused blend ofthe flagsofHoltzmiiller's dragoonsand Tott's horse-seePla te E. (From Thea trumEuropaeum, II)

Piccolomini appeared on the scene in person; he laterwrote that he saw a fatally wounded Swedish officeron the ground and still breathing, who his menassured him was Gustavus. When another Swedishattack seemed imminent, one of Piccolomini's menfinished Gustavus off with a pistol shot in the temple.

Fr: Gustavus AdolphusGustavus's body was recovered from the battlefieldlater in the day. It had been looted of everythingexcept three shirts. His famous buffcoat was sent byPiccolomini to Emperor Ferdinand II in Vienna, andwas returned to Sweden only after the First WorldWar as a token of Austrian gratitude to the SwedishRed Cross. Gustavus's horse 'Streiff' returnedheavily wounded to the Swedish lines, but died soonafterwards; it was later stuffed, and put on exhibitionin Stockholm, complete with the harness, pistols andsword allegedly carried at Liitzen. For a detailedstudy of these items see the author's article, 'Gus­tavus Adolphus, Liitzen 1632', in Military Illus­trated 0.21 (London 1989).

F2-F4: The Smaland Cavalry RegimentMost pictures of Gustavus's cavalry show themwearing cloth jackets rather than buffcoats. However,little evidence has been found for issues of uniforms,even though these were inte ded in theory. The

Smaland cavalry had blue standards, but it is no morethan a coincidence that we have chosen to show themhere mostly in blue coats.

Fz: Trooper, front rankThis trooper has the full equipment of the Swedishlight horseman: a back- and breastplate, helmet, pairof pistols, and a sword. The Polish-style helmet isrestored from the De Geer helmet drawing. Pictorialevidence suggests, however, that by 1632 the broadbrim had gone out of fashion, to be replaced byHungarian-style helmets of the type worn by C2.

-

G: Pil1age: German mercenary cavalryThe Swedes still have a terrible reputation in someareas of Germany for the destruction the Swedisharmy inflicted during the Thirty Years' War. Theblame should rest, however, not so much with thenative Swedes, who were strictly disciplined, as withthe Germans themselves, who flooded into Swedishservice after Breitenfeld. In August 1632 Gustavusbecame so concerned that he called together hisGerman officers and gave them a furious telling-off:'I here it complained of, that the Swedish soldiers are

feld and Li.itzen these were 200 strong, and wereprovided by the 'surplus' musketeers from theinfantry brigades, as well as from regiments likeBaner's which had not yet been issued with pikes.The native Swedish infantry supplied several mus­keteer detachments at Breitenfeld, and may havedone the same at Li.itzen, where the Swedish brigadeunder Gabriel Kyle had a large number of 'surplusmusketeers' .

The Kliidkammar (Wardrobe) accounts showthat virtually all native Swedish infantry sent toGermany were issued with uniforms. By 1632 mostwould have been re-clothed from captured Germanstocks. Several accounts suggest that the Swedishbrigade wore blue coats at Li.itzen.

F): Trooper, rear rankBecause of shortages, Gustavus instructed in late1630 that available armour should be given only tothe front ranks of his mercenary regiments. It is notcertain if this was also the case with the native cavalry.By 1632, eyewitness descriptions and picturessuggest that few Swedish cavalry wore any armour atall. The native regiments, however, were moreclosely supervised and so probably better equippedthan most. Gustavus instructed the rear ranks not to

use pistols before contact and to charge instead withswords drawn, and reserve the pistols for the melee.

F4: Senior oflicerOtto Sack, colonel of the Sodermanland cavalry, waspresent at Li.itzen with his regiment. His appearancehere is taken from a portrait dated 1634. His blackclothing may be in mourning for Gustavus, thoughthe account books show widespread issues of blackcloth to officers in 1630 and earlier. The featheredmace is carried as a symbol of rank in the portrait, andis another example of Polish influence. The spanner,for 'spanning' his wheel-lock pistols, is added from asecond, almost identical portrait belonging to theSack family.

FS: 'Commanded'musketeer, Gabriel Kyle'sSwedish BrigadeClose fire support from bodies of 'commanded'mu keteers was the key to the success of Swedishcavalry. Without it, the Swedes would have beenquickly overwhelmed by the better armoured andbetter mounted Imperial cuirassiers. Commandedmusketeers were deployed in formed bodies, in th

A hat worn by Gustavus inGermany, until he gave itin r63z as a sign ofspecialfavour to Count WolfgangOtto von Hohenlohe, acaptain in the YellowRegiment. It is made ofbone-coloured felted woollined on the underside with

a shaggy crimson fabric,and measures 44cm fromfront to back. The brim iscocked at the front, andkept in place by a loop andbutton on the front ofthecrown. (l-Iohenlohe familymuseum, SchlossNeuenstein, Wiirttemburg)

43

Pattern drawingofacavalry helmet foundamong the papers oftheweapons manufacturerLouis De Geer, who movedto Sweden in r627. Thisbroad-brimmed Polishstyle is seen mostly inpictures ofthe r620s. TheGerman instructions read:(top) 'The hat [i.e. helmet]shall be made eight­faceted after this patternfor the Callbiischner[?]armour'. (Left) 'And thebrim on the hat should bethree fingers broad, andwith a bar at the front ofthe hat'. (Right) 'With afeatherpipe', 'With a broadtail on the hat'. (Cheekpiece) 'With broad cheeks'.(Photo after Dahlgren;original in the Leufstaarchive, now nlOstly at theRiksarkivet)

•

,,.,, I, f I ,

• 0

,

~ . . ~

•. ,

•

""~~",, - .. ,~ ~. ~.__..--

1--::::-',

This helmet was preserveduntil the r8sos at De Geer'sarms factory at Finspang,but it is not known ifit wasactually manufactured inSweden. It is more solidlymade than Eastern-stylehelmets, and belongs to adifferent (Western)tradition ofhelmetmaking, which found itspeak in the three-barred'pots' used in the EnglishCivil Wars ofI642-sr.There is no slot for thesliding nasal-bar socharacteristic ofEasternhelmets. The cheekpiecesare here attached back tofront-and belong, in anycase, to a different helmet.(AM r6289)

44

their clothing with as much lace, ribbon, silk andother finery as they could afford ... or steal.

Select Bibliography

General works:Stephen J. Lee, The Thirty Years' War (London & NewYork I99I)-A good 'beginner's guide'.

G3: Jesuit priestClergy of the fanatical Jesuit order were the favouritetargets of the anger of the German Protestants. Theirinfluence on the Catholic rulers of the Empire wasundoubtedly one of the chief causes of the ThirtyYears' War. We take this figure from German news­sheets in which the Jesuits, in their four-corneredbiretta hats and black gowns, are regularly caricat­ured. Swedish military chaplains also wore 'uni­forms' of a kind. In July 1631, when five Swedishinfantry regiments were issued uniforms, their seniorregimental chaplains received eight ells of blackEnglish cloth, and junior chaplains seven ells ofcheaper packlaken cloth (W;;rdAccs 1631, items142- 146).

belonged until I9Z7 to theReeth family ofSysmiiparish I50km north ofHelsinki. Two members ofthe family, who trace theirorigins to Britain, are saidto ha ve served ascavalrymen: David Reid(died I6z9) and AlexanderReid (died I669). (NationalMuseum ofFinland,Helsinki, No. z7030:3)

A cavalry helmet with aneight-Hlceted skul1, similarto the De Geer pattern.The neck, nose and cheekguards are al1 missing.There are several dozenroughly similar helmets inSwedish and Finnishcol1ections, but it is notcertain ifthey were madein Scandina via or taken inPoland. This example

Gl: ArquebusierThe arquebusier was one of the two specialisedclasses of cavalry available in Germany beforeGustavus's landings. The arquebusier's principalweapon was the 'Bandelier-rohr' or arquebus, whichhung, attached by a metal spring-clip, on a shoulderbelt or 'bandolier'. Ammunition was kept in preparedpaper cartridges. These were not, as is often said,invented by Gustavus: they were in use as early as the1550S, and had been adopted by the military wellbefore 1600. Cartridges were known in German as'patroner' (singular 'patron'), from the same rootword as the English 'pattern' and Scots 'patrune' (seeMAA 235, p. 40). Arquebusiers kept their cartridgesin a special pouch or Patrontasche on the right hip.The leather flap or Flaschen Hiingsel under this hadholes or fittings for attaching a powder flask and awheellock spanner. A painting of the battle ofNordlingen by Snayers shows the cords of thesecolour-coded, apparently to prevent confusion in theheat of battle.

more insolent than their enemies ... But they are notthe Swedes, they are the Germans that commit theseinsolencies ... this most accursed, devilish robbingand stealing of yours doth ... much abate my goodpurposes.' But with his treasury empty he could notpay his troops, and the German mercenaries went onlooting as before.

Gz: Horseman (Reiter)Most of Gustavus's mercenary cavalry were calledsimply 'Reiters' (horsemen). Reiters eventuallyformed a separate, though imprecisely defined troopclass, less specialised than the arquebusier or thecuirassier, and so better suited to the diverse tasksrequired on campaign. In terms of equipment, theReiter was simply an arquebusier without an ar­quebus; or, seen another way, a cuirassier withoutheavy armour. His principal weapon was a pair ofpistols - intended primarily for point-blank combat,though used by ill-disciplined units for 'caracoling'.In practice, many Reiters abandoned their armourand wore only buffcoats and broad-brimmed felthats. Battle paintings and prints suggest that in theearly 1630S these buffcoats were still mostly sleeve­less. Mercenary cavalrymen were highly conscious oftheir status as 'cavalier-gentlemen', and decorated

45

••

-'

A•... ---- -- ....

•

•

Swedish mercenaryarquebusiers at the stormofKreuznach in March16]2 with their arquebuseshanging from bandeliers.The helmet ofthe figure onthe right has a solidrounded scull andraiseable peak similar tothe Finspang helmet. Twoalternative ways are shownfor slinging the sword.Note also the kettledrummer. (FromTheatrum Europaeum, II)

M. Roberts, Gustavus Ado/phus, A History oj Sweden/6//-16]2,2 vols. (Edinburgh 1953-1958)M. Roberts, 'Gustav Adolf and the Art of War' (in:) Essaysin Swedish History (London 1967)Sveriges Krig /6//-/6]2, by the Swedish Generalstaff, 6vols. plus 2 supplementary vols. (Stockholm 1936-9)G. Parker, The Thirty Years' War (London 1984)Walter Harte, The History oJthe Life oJGustavus Ado/phus,2 vols., (London 1759)-Surprisingly good, but to be readwith caution.

Uniforms and clothing:Erik Bellander, Driikt och Uniform (Swedish ArmyDress . . .) (Stockholm 1973)R. Cederstrom, Gustav Adolfvid Littzen (Stockholm 1944)Ole Grippenberg, Fi7lSk krigsmannabek/iidnad genom Jyrasekler (Borga 1966)-Finnish uniforms.ST. Kjellberg, Ul/ och Ylle (Lund 1943)

Art/IS and armour:Josef Aim, Arrnens E/dhandvapen Forr och Nu (Stockholm1953)-Firearms.

46

Josef Aim, Blanka Vapen och Skyddsvapen (Stockholm1932)-Steel weapons and armour.R. Cederstrom & G. Malmborg, Den ii/dre Livrustkarn­rnaren /654 (Stockholm 1930)E.W. Dahlgren, Louis De Geer (Uppsala 1923)T. Jakobsson, Beviipning och Bek/iidnad (Sveriges Krig,supplementary vol. 2) (Stockholm 1938)H. Seitz, 'Trettioariga krigets svenska armevarja' (in:)Svenska Vapenhistoriska Siillskapets Skrifler, Nya serien I(Stockholm 195 I)-Swords.H. Seitz, Sviirdet och Viirjan sorn arrnevapen (1500-1860)(Stockholm 1955)-Swords.See also the many excellent articles in the journalLivrustkarnrnaren.

Organisation, unit histories, etc.:Carl Herlitz, Svenska Arrnens Regernenten (Stockholm

1970 )

G.B. Barkman, Gustav Adolf, regernentsorganisation vid detinhernska infanteriet (Stockholm 1931)R.M. Klinckowstrom & J. Mankell, Arkiv till upplysning

\

I.::.:'; .. ,•..;' .... ,.:.: ;. , ~--

.. :.:.-.~.I..~~'.'....:.\.' ~ ..

om svenska krigens och krigsinriillningarnes historia, 3 vols.(Stockholm 1854-1861) (Abbreviated as 'SKA')J. Lindegren, Utskrivning och utsugning. Produktion ochreproduktiol1 i Bygdui 1620-1640 (Studia Historica Up­saliensia 117) (Uppsala 1980)J. Mankell, Uppgifter rorande svenska krigsmagtens styrka,sammamiittning och[rirde/ning (Stockholm 1865)

Artille~y:

A. Meyerson, Liiderkanonenfrdn Tido (Stockholm 1938)Ludvig Hammarskiold, 'Gustav II Adolfs artilleri' (in:)

Artilleri Tidskrift 1937 (Uppsala 1937)Jonas Hedberg (Ed.), Kungl. Artilleriet, Yngre Vasatiden(Stockholm 1985)

Seventeenth century• •armIes on campaIgn were

like moving villages. Whenthe Blue Regiment ofFootmarched into Nordlingenon Easter Monday 1634 itnumbered 980 nlen, 14guns and 40 munitionwaggons. The 'tail' ofcamp-followers followed:children, whores, youths,wives, and350 widows,bringing the total number

of'mouths' (which theburgers ofNordlingen hadto feed) to over 3,000 plus350 horses and donkeys.The 'Swedish baggage'shown here from a print ofthe battle ofWitten weierin 1638 shows the sort ofwaggons tha t were used tocarry a regiment'sequipment. (TheatrurnEuropaeurn, III)

•

Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, An History oj the Late Warres... r1630-1640J(London 1648)J.]' Grimmelshausen, Simplicius Simplicissimus-Firstpublished 1668; many translations.Israel Hoppe, Ceschichte des ersten schwedischen­polnischen Krieges in Preussen (Leipzig 1887)Robert Monro, Monro His Expedition (London 1637)Raimondo Montecuccoli, Ausgewiih/te schriften (Wien &

Leipzig, 1899-19°1)Johann of assau, 'Relatidn angaende kriget i Livland1601-1602' (in:) Historiska Handlingar 20 (Stockholm

19°5)Charles Ogier, Dziennik pod1"(;zy do Polski, 2 vols. (Gdansk1950-53)-Polish and Latin text.Rikskansleren Axel Oxenstiernas skrifter och breJvexling(Stockholm 1888, etc.) = 'AOSB'.W. Schildknecht, Harmonia in Jortalitiis (Alte Stettin1652 )

Theatrum Europaeum, vols. II & III (Frankfurt-am-Main

1637, 1639)James Turner, Pallas Armata (London 1683)(W. Watts) The SlTJedish IntelligenceI', Parts 1-4 (London1632 -33)(W. Watts) The S11Jedish Discipline (London 1632)

Works by cOlltemporal·ies:B.P. v. Chemnitz, Koniglichen Schwedischen in Teutsch/andgefiihrteu Kriegs, Vol. I (Alte Stettin 1648)G. Diodati, 'Bericht liber die Schlacht bei Llitzen' (in:)Forschungen zlIr delltschell Ceschichte, 4 (Gottingen 1864)George Fleetwood, 'Letter from G.F. to his father givingan account of the battle of Lutzen' (in:) The CamdenMiscellany, [(London 1847)

Most useful manuscript sources:Krigsarkivet: muster rolls and military account books(militierakningar = MR).Kungl. Armbnuseum: State trophy collection archive.Riksarkivet: P. Sonden, Militiira cheJer i Svemka Annen... 1620-184°, manuscript 1916; Leufsta arkivet.Slottsarkivet: Kladkammarrakenskaper (Royal Wardrobeaccounts = WardAccs).

'-----47

3

Battle at the Vistula mouth, 1628:l:Leathercannon 2:Gnu1ner3: Artillery driver4: King Gustavus Adolphus

B

Mounted infantry:1: Dragoon2: Unmounted dragoon3: Mounted jiiger

3

2

1

1 2

Finns and Uvonians:1: Aderkas's Uvonian Cuirassiers2: Ton's Swedish Cuirassiers3: Stalhandske's Finnish Horse

3 c

3: King's German Life Regt.4: Ohm's Regt.5: Wilhelm ofWeimar's Life Regt.

5

1

4

Cavalry Comets:I: Baner's Life Regt.2: Uppland Regt.

D

1: Hom's Dragoon Regt.2: Holtzmiiller's Dragoon Coy.3: Winckel's Dragoon Coy., 1635

3

5

4: Schaffinan's Cavalry Regt.5: Ernst ofWeimar's Life Regt.6: Totl's Cavalry Regt.

4

6

•

E

•

' ..

-•

•

Liitzen, 1632:1: King Gustavus Adolphus2: Trooper, Smaland Cavalry Regt.3: Trooper, Smaland Cavalry Regt.4: Senior officer5: Commanded musketeer

,

1

F

4

2

5

3

G

I

3

German mercenary cavalry:1: Arquebusier2: Reiter3: Jesuit priest

2

I