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ESSAYS IN SWEDISH HISTORY

that function as ‘among the most precious jewels in H.M. diadem’.¹⁷ But this was itself a sign of their weakness: they grasped at prestige in default of power. Even in the desperate financial circumstances of 1674, de la Gardie tried to impose on Europę by vast dispendious embassies.¹⁸ Charles x would never have used such tactics, nor held such language. Already Swedish statesmen are beginning to speak in the accents of Hópken and Tessin.

By 1679, then, the power which thirty years before had terrified and astonished Europę had been reduced to a position of considerable ignominy. Peace with security necessitated subsidies; subsidies entangled her in war; war, if recent experience went for anything, led to defeats which cast doubt on the long-unquestioned ąuality of the Swedish army. And when a peace at last extricated Sweden from these embarrass-ments, she owed her salvation to a settlement dictated, almost behind her back, by Louis xiv. The heirs of Gustav Adolf had become the vassals of France: French and Dutch diplomats debated the fate of Swedish territories in the same tonę as they discussed the possessions of Spain, as pieces of booty or objects of exchange.¹⁹ In 1672 Sir William Tempie could still write of Sweden as a great and potentially aggressive power;²⁰ but the unrivalled French diplomatic service knew better. Already Mazarin in his day had opined that ‘la balance penche plutót du cóte de sa chute’ ;²¹ a decade or so later Lionne treated the Swedes as clients whom he could reduce to order at the crack of the whip.²² Pomponne and Courtin were contemptuous of the enervation of Sweden’s energies and yenality of her politicians.²³ And as late as 1689 Bidal (a bad observer, how-ever) classed Sweden with Hanover among the minor powers.²⁴

Meanwhile, in 1672, the regency had come to an end, and Charles xi had assumed (at least nominally) the government of his dominions. It was not until the outbreak of war in 1674 that he began to develop a mind and a policy of his own, and to permit himself for the first time to think that his magnificent uncle de la Gardie might possibly be less wise and less deserving than he had been taught to believe. The disasters of the war, the administrative and financial weaknesses which it laid bare, the insinuations of de la Gardie’s political enemies, conyinced him of the incompetence and self-seeking of the Regents; and

his own vigorous performances in the field gave him self-confidence. Charles xi had nonę of his father’s military genius: his solution to all tactical problems was to attack with the sword;²⁵ he was quite destitute of any strategie insight. It was as ąuartermaster and adjutant, rather than as commander-in-chief, that he madę his indispensable contribution to Swedish military history. At the battle of Lund, nevertheless, his reck-less bravery turned the tide and saved his country; and his success as a soldier set a permanent mark on his reign. The army became his passion; the comrades in arms of the dark days of 1676 and 1677-Rutger von Ascheberg²⁶ and Nils Bielke, in particular - always held a special place in his esteem. To them he turned with confidence, in preference to the civilians who had let the country down. By 1679 this tendency had become so marked that the central government in Stock-holm had been virtually superseded or thrust aside by a camarilla of king’s friends at headąuarters.²⁷ Already before the war ended events had madę Charles something like a military dictator.

The most intelligent, influential and unscrupulous of the new advisers was Johan Gyllenstierna; and it was he, morę than any other man, who laid the foundations upon which absolut-ism was to be erected in the next decade. In the few months of life which remained to him after the war (he died prematurely in 1680) Gyllenstierna also tried a new venture in foreign policy. Its basis was reconciliation with Denmark; and histor-ians long considered it to be the forerunner of the ‘Scandina-vianism’ of a later age. The researches of Georg Landberg have pricked that bubble;²⁸ and we now know that Gyllenstierna was really an expansionist of the traditional type, essentially a man of the Age of Greatness. His friendship for Denmark was purely opportunist and tactical; and he saw the solution to Sweden’s problems in renewed aggression in Germany, or perhaps in the conąuest of Norway.²⁹ His foreign policy was really a blind alley: the way forward was to be indicated by his successor, Bengt Oxenstierna, and above all by Charles xi himself.

It would be idle to pretend that Charles’s views on foreign affairs were either subtle or profound. On the contrary, they were simple to the point of being simple-minded. To preserve