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THE GALLERY OF PORTRAITS: WITH MEMOIRS.
LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
Duke-Street, Lambeth.
PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.
Page.
GUST. ADOLPHUS.
During the fourteenth, and the beginning of the fifteenth century, Sweden, lying under vassalage to the crown of Denmark, suffered the evils which commonly belong to that condition. Gustavus Vasa, after a series of romantic adventures, established the independence of his country, and was deservedly elected by the Swedish Diet, in 1523, to wear its crown. The same kingdom to which he gave a place among free states, his grandson, Gustavus Adolphus, raised from the obscurity of a petty northern power, to rule in Germany, and to be the terror of the Church of Rome.
The establishment of the Reformation was coeval with the independence of Sweden; and a fundamental law forbade any future sovereign to alter the national religion, or to admit Roman Catholics to offices of power and trust. For infringing this principle, Sigismond, by election King of Poland, the lineal successor of Gustavus Vasa, was set aside by the Diet, and the crown was given to his father's younger brother, Charles, Duke of Sudermania. Charles died, and was succeeded by his son Gustavus Adolphus, December 31, 1611; the high promise of whose youth induced the States to abridge the period of minority, and admit him at once to the exercise of regal power, though he had but just attained the age of seventeen, being born December 9, 1594.
He had been trained up in the knowledge likely to be serviceable to a king and a soldier. He spoke the Latin language, then a universal medium of communication, with uncommon energy and precision; he conversed fluently in French, Italian, and German; he had studied history, political science, mathematics, and military tactics; and commencing with the part of a musketeer, he had been made master, by practice, of all the details of a soldier's life. He was capable of very severe application to abstruse study, and is said to have passed whole nights in reading the military history of the ancients. He was of uncommon stature and strength, and his constitution was early inured to labour and endurance.
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