A biography emphasizing the military career of the seventeenth-century Swedish king whose new system of warfare was used well into the twentieth century.

Gustavus Adolphus - A history of the art of war from its revival after the middle ages to the end of the Spanish succession war. Volume 1 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1890. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

The little-known story of the Swedish king and military commander who conquered much of Germany in the early seventeenth century. As one of the foremost military commanders of the early seventeenth century, Gustavus Adophus, king of Sweden, played a vital role in defending the Protestant cause during the Thirty Years War. In the space of two years—between 1630 and 1632—he turned the course of the war, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Breitenfeld and conquering large parts of Germany. Yet remarkably little has been written about him in English, and no full account of his extraordinary career has been published in recent times. That is why this perceptive and scholarly study is of such value. The book sets Gustavus in the context of Swedish and European dynastic politics and religious conflict in the early seventeenth century, and describes in detail Swedish military organization and Gustavus’s reforms. His intervention in the Thirty Years War is covered in graphic detail—the decision to intervene, his alliance with France, his campaigns across the breadth of Germany, and his generalship at the two major battles he fought there. His exceptional skill as a battlefield commander transformed the fortunes of the Protestant side in the conflict, and he had established himself as a major European figure before his death on the battlefield. Lars Ericson Wolke, one of the leading experts on the military history of the Baltic and the Thirty Years War, offers a fascinating insight into Gustavus the man and the soldier.