Gustav Adolf was in his thirty-eighth year when he fell.  Of stature he was tall and stout, a fair-haired, blue-eyed giant, stern in war, gentle in the friendships of peace.  He was a born ruler of men.  Though he was away fighting in foreign lands all the years of his reign, he kept a firm grasp on the home affairs of his kingdom.  One traces his hand everywhere, ordering, shaping, finding ways, or making them where there was none.  The valuable mines of Sweden were ill managed.  The metal was exported in coarse pigs to Germany for very little, worked up there, and resold to Sweden at the highest price.  He created a Board of Mines, established smelteries, and the day came when, instead of going abroad for its munitions of war, Sweden had for its customers half Europe.  Like Christian of Denmark with whom he disagreed, he encouraged industries and greatly furthered trade and commerce.  He built highways and canals, and he did not forget the cause of instruction.  Upon the university at Upsala he bestowed his entire personal patrimony of three hundred and thirteen farms as a free gift.  His people honor him with cause as the real founder of the Swedish system of education.

The master he was always.  Sweden had, on one hand, a powerful, able nobility; on the other, a strong, independent peasantry,—­a combination full of pitfalls for a weak ruler, but with equal promise of great things under the master hand.  His father had cowed the stubborn nobles with the headsman’s axe.  Gustav Adolf drew them to him and imbued them with his own spirit.  He found them a contentious party within the state; he left them its strongest props in the conduct of public affairs.  Nor was it always with persuasion he worked.  His reward for the unjust judge has been quoted.  When the council failed to send him supplies in Germany, pleading failure of crops as their excuse, he wrote back:  “You speak of the high prices of corn.  Probably they are high because those who have it want to profit by the need of others.”  And he set a new chief over the finances.  On the other hand, he gave shape to the relations between king and people.  The Riksdag held its sessions, but the laws that ruled it were so vague that it was no unusual thing for men who were not members at all to attend and join in the debates.  Gustav Adolf put an abrupt end to “a state of things that exposed Sweden to the contempt of the nations.”  As he ordered it, the initiative remained with the crown; it was the right of the Riksdag to complain and discuss; of the King to “choose the best” after hearing all sides.

As a young prince, Gustav Adolf fell deeply in love with Ebba Brahe, the beautiful daughter of one of Sweden’s most powerful noblemen.  The two had been play-mates and became lovers.  But the old queen frowned upon the match.  He was the coming king, she was a subject, and the queen managed, with the help of Oxenstjerna, who was Gustav’s best friend all through his life, to make him give