GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.* COLONEL DODGE, a learned, industrious, and intelligent officer,
has taken to heart the advice of Napoleon—to read and read again the wars of the great captains—and is pre. senting the results of his studies in a series of bulky treatises. He has already disposed of Alexander, Hannibal, and Cmsar, and his new volume bears the name of Gustavus Adolphus, although the four hundred pages dealing with the King of Sweden are followed by another four hundred recounting the exploits of Turenne, Eugene, Marlborough, and Charles XIL The German campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus are described at considerable length, the story being based upon extensive reading, though the author seems unacquainted with Gindely's history of the Thirty Years' War, and with the short but invaluable sketch in which Clausewitz, daring the earlier period of his strategetical studies, reviewed the Swedish King's campaigns.
Colonel Dodge starts from eternal principles, and uses the great captains to illustrate them. The weakness of this method lies in its inherent limitations, for in practice eternal principles are simply the writer's own theory of war, Colonel Dodge's being that of Jomini. No one will deny the greatness of Jomini as a pioneer in analytical theory ; but Jomini's ideas took shape as early as 1806, and although it would be untrue to say that the principles which he formulated have since been rejected or are out of date, it is none the less a mistake to suppose that his system still holds the ground. Jomini represents in the study of war the Aufkldrung, the age of rationalism, and though he lived to discuss the campaign of Koniggratz, his standpoint never changed, and he remained a systematiser to the end. The greatest advances in our knowledge of war are due to the historical school and to the reaction against systems. From these two move- ments Colonel Dodge seems to have been isolated, and his book, though its account of the campaigns of Gustavus is careful and correct, is hardly representative of modern views of war.
War, according to the historical school, is nothing more than a phase of policy in action. Military success is primarily a matter of sound policy. No strategy and no tactics ever led to victory a cause which was not rightly founded in the conditions of the time. Fortes fort una adj uvat. To the superficial observer the great captains appear to have luck on their side ; in the language of the historical school they succeed when they are at the head of a
• Gustavus Adolphus: a History of the Art of War from its Revival after t4 Middle Ages to the End of the Spanish Sucessaion War, with a Detailed Account of the Campaigns of the Great Swede, and of the mist Famous Campaigns of Turenne, Conde, Eugeme, and Marlborough. By Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army. Boson and New York : Houghton. Mifflie, and Co. growing cause, they fail when the tide of the times turns against them. That this was the case with Napoleon is almost a commonplace; it was perhaps the good luck of Gustavus that he died when the tide was about to turn. Never had opportunity a greater share in success than at the time of the Swedish intervention in Germany. At the beginning of ND Ferdinand and the counter Reformation seemed to be triumphant•, irresistible. The Catholic Powers, Spain, the Emperor, the League, and France, seemed to be united; the Protestants were divided, England was paralysed by the opposition between the King and the nation, the German Protestants, disunited, had been beaten out of the field. The Emperor was preparing their death-blow in the shape of the Edict of Restitution. But the seizure of the Dukedom of Mantua by the rightful heir, Gonza.ga•Nevers, was the small cloud which heralded an anti - Imperial tempest. Pope Urban VIII. (Barberini) had grown up in the patriotic oppo- sition to the preponderance of Spain and Habsburg. French influence had helped at his election ; he sided with Gonzaga and appealed to Richelieu to help him. Richelieu, with the Huguenots defeated, his peace with England made, and the Pope supporting him, entered boldly on the conflict with Austria and Spain. The Princes of the Catholic League were indignant at Wallenstein's exactions and ambitions, and resolved to be rid of him. Thus at the Diet of Regensburg in the summer of 1630, Ferdinand was confronted by a united Catholic opposition, to which Wallenstein had to be sacrificed, and Richelieu at the same time had prepared an alliance between France, Sweden, England, and Holland for the pur- pose of breaking the Emperor's power, against which at this time the Catholic League was in decided revolt. This was the moment when Gustavus, representing a united nation and a clear, because necessary, policy, landed in Usedom. The causes for which he was fighting were, first of all, the defence of Sweden, which was to be secured by the conquest of the southern shore of the Baltic, carrying with it the impossibility of the construction of a rival navy in that sea; next, the preservation of the Protestant religion in Germany, without which its permanence in Sweden could not be insured ; and, lastly, the balance of power, which was threatened by the successes of Ferdinand. These causes were so good as to override many difficulties. They enabled Gustavus to force the Elector of Brandenburg on to his own side, although the Swedish occupation of Pomerania en. dangered interests vital to the Electoral House. They made it possible for Gustavus to accompany the progress of his arms by the restoration of unity among the Protestant estates. But the success of a cause finds its limits in the reaction which it excites. The wise strategy of Gustavus led him to extend his base from the Oder and the Elbe to the Main and the Rhine. The impulse which his victories gave to Protestantism tended to close up the disunion between his Catholic adversaries. He therefore met with a determined resistance from Maximilian and the League, who were induced by the threatening danger again to accept Wallenstein as their deliverer. The Swedish successes aroused the jealousy of Richelieu ; up to the battle of Liitzen the Swedish army was identified with the Protestant cause ; after that battle the political nature of the war became manifest to all the world. This change was inherent in the nature of the events, and would hardly have been prevented by the survival of the King. His death, in the moment of victory, enabled posterity to re- gard him as a Luther in arms ; had his life been prolonged he would probably have been classed with Richelieu and Napoleon.
A man who can see the actual world with eyes as clear as those of Gustavus Adolphus, who can as surely as he conceive his purpose and divine his opportunity, is not likely to be either visionary or behind the times in the choice of his means. In conducting the war and directing his armies Gustavus was eminently practical; he had no pet theories to work out, no Jomini to illustrate. He was educated enough to be in touch with the best military thought of his day, that of the Dutch leaders. Brought up in war, he per- fectly understood the nature of discipline, whit's his own pre- eminent bravery and strong character made it easy for him to introduce and maintain. He well understood that strategical combinations are an arch of which the keystone is a battle won. His combinations therefore rest upon the superior qualities of his troops and their leaders; upon organisation, tactics, and dieepline. He was an innovator, though perhaps not an inventor. Kings and rulers rarely invent; they put into practise the ideas of the best among their contemporaries. In his strategy he was eminently methodical. His operations exhibit a wonderful judgment in the selection of the plan by which the most can be made of the means available to realise the purpose suggested by a given situation. His first object is to gain a secure base, his second to protect his com- munications as he advances. Accordingly the campaign in which he reduces the coast of Pomerania is slow and careful. When he is there sufficiently established, his ad- vance follows the great water lines, first the Oder, then the Havel, then the Elbe. Whether moving by river or by road he leaves behind him a chain of strong places. It is the per- ception of the necessity for a base and communications that makes him aim at Mainz rather than at Vienna, but at the same time he is influenced by the determination to attack and defeat the enemy's principal army, which at this time, when the Emperor was without a formidable force, was that of Tilly and the League.
Without a cultivated intelligence, generalship in any high sense is impossible, bat intelligence alone will never make a General. In the conception of any military enterprise, calcu- lation and analysis are indispensable. But their result is never more than a probability, and on this probability every- thing must be staked. A General in supreme command is in this sense a gambler. He requires a peculiar courage distinct from physical bravery to enable him to make the great bet in which the stakes are himself, his army, his cause, and his country. Without this kind of daring nothing can be accom- plished in war, and not a few brave men, brilliant in all but the highest rank, have failed in supreme command because they lacked it. In this magnanimity of soul Gustavus Adolphus excelled, and he combined with it the bravery which enjoys itself in a fight, and which makes its possessor the idol of his troops. His true soldier's temperament is perhaps best illustrated, not in his forcing of the passage of the Lecb, which many consider his most brilliant exploit, but in his attack on the Alte Veste at Niiremberg, which was repulsed. A success was not probable. In any case, a heavy loss was certain. Yet no one who knows what soldiers are can doubt that Gustavus was right; not to have attacked would have been fatal to the spirit of the Swedish army, and after every- thing has been said about the necessity of knowledge, of discipline, and of tactical skill, it remains true that the vital quality of an army is its spirit, or to use the good plain English word, its pluck.
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