From Oxenstierna to Charles XII: Four Studies

The spectacular career of Gustav Adolf by no means established Sweden as a great power. In the four years after his death such a development became increasingly improbable. At Westphalia in 1648 the improbable became a fact; but the momentum of Swedish imperial expansion did not culminate until 1658, when Charles X imposed peace upon a prostrate Denmark. The core of this volume of four essays, by the doyen of historians of Sweden, lies in the two studies of the man who bestrode the summit. ...