After the ice age glaciers receded, Sweden ushered in the Stone Age, where a group of tribes engaged in hunting and food gathering lived in Scandinavia. With the formation of trade routes from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, iron from southern Europe was introduced to Scandinavia. Nordic hides and amber were sold to Greece and Rome. At the end of the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 4th centuries AD, Scandinavian tribes, known as "ethnic workshops", exported large numbers of immigrants to Western and Southern Europe. In the 10th century, Roman Catholicism was introduced to Sweden from Denmark and was quickly consolidated.
Around 1100 AD, Sweden began to form a state. Sweden at this time was a loose kingdom of a number of highly independent provinces. The provinces pass through their own laws. The king, on the other hand, was responsible for coordinating between the provinces and organizing foreign wars. By the 12th century, the crown was already very powerful, forming a unified national taxation and law. By this time, Sweden had conquered finland's southwestern coastal region and continued to expand to the southeast. In 1157, Sweden annexed Finland. After The independence of Sweden, Protestant Lutheranism gained dominance.
In 1250, Biye Jarl, regent of the Kingdom of Sweden, made his son Waldmar Biersson king, and the Forcon dynasty began. Compared with their neighbors, the Danes and Norwegians of the pirate period were more focused on commercial trade than conquest and colonization. The Swedes first reached the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, along the Neva River and Lake Ladoga. They established a stronghold here and continued to advance south, establishing the Principality of Novgorod in Novgorod. Another swede entered the heart of Eastern Europe and established Kievan Rus' and they were known as the Varyags.
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In 1397, in order to counter the power of the powerful Hanseatic Alliance in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden met in Kalmar in southeastern Sweden and decided to form the Kalmar Union, which was dominated by the Danish royal family, and from then on Sweden and Norway submitted to the Danish king's rule while retaining the status of the kingdom. But during the Union period, conflicts between the Swedes and the Danes continued.
In 1517, the Swedish regent Sten Stulet Jr. launched an campaign against Danish rule. The Swedes wanted to end the Kalmar League and restore national independence; for this union was clearly only in Denmark's favor. The grand nobleman Eric Johansson and his son Gustav Vaasa also attended the event. At the Battle of Blanquilka on 2 October 1518, the Swedish defeated Gustav Vaasa was captured by the Danes, but later managed to escape. In 1520, King Christian II of Denmark led an army into Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, to suppress the rebellion. Opposition nobles led by Stehl were arrested, and in November the Danes created the "Stockholm Bloody Massacre" in Sweden, killing about 100 Swedish nobles, clerics, and citizens, including Eric Johansson, while Gustav fled to Dalarna. In 1521 Gustav formed a volunteer army that obeyed his orders. The German cities of Leipzig and Lübeck helped him a lot, including some soldiers. In August 1521, the inhabitants of Dalarna elected Gustav Vaasa as regent and supreme ruler of Sweden. He spent the next two years fighting the Danish army that had come to fight.
On 6 June 1523, Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden at the parliament convened by Stranners, establishing the Vasa Dynasty. After a long siege, Gustav Vasa's army recaptured Stockholm from the Danes on 24 June 1523. In the time of Gustav Vasa, the abolition of the Kalmar League was officially announced. In 1523, Christian II's throne in Denmark was deposed by rebellious nobles; Gustav was keenly allied with the new king Frederick I, whom the nobility had embraced. After a brutal struggle, Christian II failed and was captured, and finally died in prison.
Gustav Vasa's policy of centralization provoked fierce resistance among some Swedes. In 1524-1525, the first people's uprising took place. On 21 January 1528, Gustav Vaasa was officially crowned in uppsala cathedral for Gustav I. In 1541, Gustav I allied with King Christian III of Denmark, relying on the latter's help to end Sweden's longstanding vassalship with the Hanseatic League, a German commercial city group. At the same time, he actively promoted the commercial development of his country and soon became one of the richest monarchs in Europe. In 1542-1543, a second popular uprising took place. Gustav I brutally suppressed the uprising and dismembered its leader, Nils Decker. In 1560, Gustav I died and his eldest son, Eric XIV, ascended the throne.
Eric XIV was officially crowned on 25 June 1561. Eric XIV fought in the Battle of Livonia and the War of the North in order to compete for supremacy in the Baltic Sea. He was a cruel and suspicious man. From the 1560s he may have suffered from mental illness. Eric XIV's half-brother John, Duke of Finland, attempted to seize the throne for many years. After years of struggle, Eric XIV finally failed, was deposed by Parliament and imprisoned for life. In 1568 John ascended the throne as King of Sweden for John III. In 1570, John III did not make Sweden too much compromise, ending the Seven Years' War in the North. Until 1582, he also won many wars with Russia, and eventually Sweden recaptured Narva. These victories were related to the diplomatic ally of Poland, whose son Sigismund became king of Poland in 1587.
John III died on 17 November 1592, and the legend was in Sigismon. At this time, Sigismund was king of Poland and Sweden. After succeeding to the throne, Sigismund tried to restore the Protestant state established by his grandfather to the state religion of Roman Catholicism, and was driven back to Poland. His uncle Karl was granted the status of regent of Sweden. Karl's son, Gustav Adolf, was born in Stockholm on December 9, 1594. In September 1598, Karl and Sigismund went to war at Stagbro, where Sigismund was defeated and lost the title of King of Sweden, retaining only the title of King of Poland. In 1603, Karl was proclaimed King of Sweden and the following year he was named Karl IX. In 1605, at the age of 11, Adolf was able to discuss state affairs with his ministers. In 1608, Karl IX was officially crowned. In 1610, Adolf went with his father on a campaign against Denmark. On 30 October 1611, Karl IX died and Adolf ascended the throne as Gustav II.
In 1612-1613, Gustav II was defeated in battle against the Danish army and forced to make peace. From 1614 to 1617, Gustav II led an army against Russia, which won the victory and acquired the land around the Gulf of Finland. In October 1617, Gustav II held a coronation ceremony at uppsala cathedral. From that year on, he carried out military reforms, introduced a universal conscription system, established a standing army with strong combat effectiveness, streamlined the army structure, improved its armaments, turned artillery into an independent branch of the armed forces, and made it closely coordinated with infantry, cavalry and logistics, and adopted flexible linear tactics.
The German Thirty Years' War was a great struggle between The Protestant and Catholic forces in Europe, and in fact a great struggle between the german unification and separatist forces. In 1618, the first phase of the German Thirty Years' War, the Bohemian Phase, began. From 1621 onwards, Gustav II made several expeditions into Livonia, Poland, eventually capturing the capital Riga. In 1624, the Bohemian Phase ended. In 1625, the Thirty Years' War entered the second phase of the Danish phase. In 1626, Gustav II won the Battle of Volkhov. In 1629, under the leadership of the distinguished military figures of the Holy Roman Empire, Wallenstein and Tilly, both the Protestant Alliance was defeated. In 1630, Gustav led only 13,000 Swedish troops to land in Germany, officially opening the third phase of the Thirty Years' War. At the beginning of the war, Gustav II adopted a steady strategy, consolidating the Baltic Riparian area as a rear base, and then going up the Oder River step by step to defeat the Imperial army in some small battles.
In 1631, due to the compulsion of the situation, the originally neutral German Protestant states of Brandenburg and Saxony fell to the side of Sweden, which made Gustav II very favorable and began to boldly invade the heart of Germany. In September of that year, the main forces of the Swedish and Saxon armies met the main forces of the Roman commander-in-chief, Count Tilly, at BredenFeld near Leipzig, and engaged in a terrifying battle. In this battle, both sides of the left flank were defeated by the other, but Gustav II's army showed higher tactical quality, and after the Saxon army on the left flank collapsed, it quickly filled the gap, stabilized the position, and finally won a one-sided victory.
At the Battle of the Lek River in April 1632, Gustav II crossed the river and defeated his opponent in front of an army of similar strength to himself, and the commander-in-chief, Count Tilly, was killed in this battle. Gustav II then marched into Bavaria, the stronghold of the Catholic League. On 17 May of the same year, he led a Swedish army into Munich. In this case, the Holy Roman Emperor had to reinstate the scrupulous Wallenstein as commander. After His comeback, Wallenstein defeated Gustav II at the Battle of Nuremberg, defeated the Saxon army, and marched into Saxony, ready to cut off Gustav II's retreat. Gustav was forced to return to Saxony, where both sides gathered their armies near Leipzig, and another decisive battle arrived, the famous Battle of Lützen. The battle was fought in the fog, and at first the Swedish army went well, but when Gustav II broke away from the team as he returned to the center from the right wing of the front, he was killed in a fight with the Roman Imperial army. The Swedish army, led by Bernhard, continued to fight and still won the final victory of the battle.
Battle of Lützen
Later, Sweden, despite France's involvement in the war, finally held out until the victory of the Thirty Years' War. Sweden became a nordic power with Finland, the northern coastal region of Germany, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga in addition to its homeland.
Gustav II has always been remembered by posterity as the God of War. His military reforms and his bravery on the battlefield did profoundly influence the development of the European military and changed the political landscape of the time. Of course, Gustav was not just a fierce warrior, he was also very successful in internal affairs. The military system pioneered by Gustav II did not go with him, and for the next hundred years Sweden's military might remained so powerful that it resembled the hegemon of the Baltic Sea region.