The Historical Journal, , (), pp. – # Cambridge University Press

DOI: .}SX Printed in the United Kingdom

JUST WAR IN THEORY AND PRACTICE :

THE LEGITIMATION OF SWEDISH

INTERVENTION IN THE THIRTY

YEARS WAR*

PA> RTEL PIIRIMA> ESt John’s College, Cambridge

. This article attempts to establish a connection between the practical legitimation of war

and the theories of international law, examining Sweden’s efforts to justify her intervention in the

Thirty Years War in ����. Swedish argumentative strategy is analysed in the light of two major

traditions of thinking about war: theological and humanist ‘ just war ’ traditions. The article argues

that Swedish leaders did not appeal to the more belligerent humanist arguments which would have

enabled them to describe their campaign as a just war either on the grounds of pre-emptive defence or

humanitarian intervention. Instead, they tried to interpret it as being within the limits set by the more

restrictive theological tradition. This strategy eventually forced them to relinquish attempts to present

their intervention as a genuine war and to develop an argument of ‘police-action ’, even though it

resulted in a loss of credibility. The case study suggests that in the early seventeenth century the

prevailing normative language of just war was that of the theologians.

‘Warres are Suits of Appeale to the Tribunall of Gods Justice, where there are

no Superiours on Earth to determine the Cause. ’ This definition by the English

humanist Francis Bacon excellently conveys the early modern understanding

of war as a trial by combat where, in absence of a commonly acknowledged

power that would enforce the law, the parties resorted to military force in order

to elicit a divine verdict." Yet the formal similarities between a war and a civil

litigation could not conceal the deep moral rift between them. In a ‘triall of

Armes ’ as opposed to a ‘triall of Law’# one took justice into one’s own hands,

assuming simultaneously the roles of both plaintiff and judge, and killed fellow

men and even fellowChristians as a consequence of that decision.$Nevertheless,

* I am grateful to Peter Burke, Istvan Hont, and Jonathan Scott for their comments on an

earlier draft of this article." Francis Bacon, ‘Considerations touching a warre with Spaine’ [], in idem, Certaine

miscellany works of the right honourable Francis Lord Verulam, Viscount S. Alban (London, ), p. . Cf.

Ian Clark, Waging war: a philosophical introduction (Oxford, ), pp. ff.# I refer to terms used by another English humanist William Fulbecke, The pandects of the law of

nations (London, ), p. .$ ‘The same party in one and the same case is both plaintiff and judge, a situation which is

contrary to the natural law’, Francisco Sua! rez, ‘A work on three theological virtues faith, hope and

charity : on charity. Disp. . On war’ [] (hereafter ‘On war’), in Selections from three works of

Francisco SuaU rez, S.J., : The translation (Oxford and London, ), pp. –, here ch. , §.

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apart from a small minority of pacifist thinkers, there was a general belief that

under certain conditions such killing was permissible.% These conditions were

the subject matter of a strand of medieval and early modern theological and

legal thought which is known as the ‘ just war’ (bellum iustum) doctrine.&

Thus a ruler, if he wanted to act with good conscience, had to be convinced

that his war fulfilled the conditions of bellum iustum. Furthermore, the justness

of a particular war had to be proved both to one’s own subjects and to the

outside world. As Francis Bacon put it in another treatise, ‘There must bee a

care had that the motives of Warre bee iust and honorable : for that begets an

alacrity, aswel in the Souldiers that fight, as in the people that affoord pay: it

draws on and procures aids, and brings manie other comodities besides. ’' In

addition to rallying support at home and abroad for a particular military

venture, such ‘commodities ’ included the enhancement of the ruler’s and

state’s reputation in a long-term perspective.( Consequently, an early modern

‘contest of arms’ was always accompanied by a propaganda war, a bataille de

la plume. War-prone early modern Europe, where most states were at war for

more than half of the period from to ,) was flooded with all sorts of

vindicatory texts such as official declarations and manifestos, pamphlets,

published correspondence, eulogies, and historical accounts.

It is no wonder that for a long time historians, being primarily interested in

the explanation of the events, dismissed such texts as mere propaganda which

serves to disguise rather than to reveal the true motives of the agents. Such a

sceptical approach to legitimations is, indeed, particularly justified for

seventeenth-century Europe, considering the strong influence of the doctrines

% On sixteenth-century humanist pacifism see Quentin Skinner, The foundations of modern political

thought ( vols., Cambridge, ), , pp. – ; on pacifism in general Peter Brock, Varieties of

pacifism: a survey from antiquity to the outset of the twentieth century (th edn, Syracuse, NY, ).& For a thought-provoking recent account of just war theories see Richard Tuck, The rights of war

and peace: political thought and the international order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, ). The most

comprehensive study is provided by Peter Haggenmacher, Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste (Paris,

). On particular authors see also Robert L. Holmes, On war and morality (Princeton, ) ;

James Turner Johnson, Ideology, reason and limitation of war: religious and secular concepts, ����–����

(Princeton, ) ; idem, Just war tradition and the restraint of war (Princeton, ) ; William V.

O’Brien, The conduct of a just and limited war (New York, ) ; F. H. Russell, The just war in the middle

ages (Cambridge, ) ; Joan Tooke, The just war in Aquinas and Grotius (London, ) ; Hedley

Bull, Benedict Kingsbury, and Adam Roberts, eds., Hugo Grotius and international relations (Oxford,

).' Francis Bacon, ‘Perseus, sive bellum’, in De sapientia veterum [], trans. Sir Arthur Gorges

[] (New York and London, ), pp. –, at p. .( On Sweden see Erik Ringmar, Identity, interest and action: a cultural explanation of Sweden’s

intervention in the Thirty Years War (Cambridge, ), passim.) The leader was Spain with eighty years, followed closely by the Habsburgs with seventy-two

years and the Turks with sixty-six years. Sweden, the Netherlands, France, and Russia were all

more than sixty years in war, and Portugal and England more than forty years. Markus Meumann,

‘Beschwerdewege und Klagemo$ glichkeiten gegen Kriegsfolgen, Okkupation und milita$ rische

Belastungen im Reich und Frankreich um die Mitte des . Jahrhunderts ’, in Heinz Duchhardt,

ed., Krieg und Frieden im Ur bergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit : Theorie, Praxis, Bilder (Mainz, ),

pp. –, at p. .

of ‘reason of state ’ and ‘arcana imperii ’ which not only endorsed a pragmatic

approach to political decisions but also dictated the concealment of the motives

behind these decisions as state secrets.* Furthermore, even if the legitimations

might sometimes contain the true reasons why the states went to war, it is

virtually impossible to verify such cases, since we have no independent evidence

of the motives of the agents which could not be dismissed as vindications or

hypocrisy by the ‘realist ’ account of motivation."!

However, the fact that we cannot examine the causes of events on the basis

of legitimations does not render these documents worthless as historical

evidence. I want to show in this article that legitimations provide access to the

normative beliefs of much larger sections of European society than do the

normative theories themselves. Indeed, although the theories are often

developed for the justification of certain political actions, it is not possible to

apply such innovative theories instrumentally in the legitimations. Legiti-

mations are necessarily conservative since their function is not to change the

normative beliefs but to relate specific events to widely acknowledged moral or

legal principles. Thus an analysis of the arguments of the legitimations of war

would inform us of the prevailing normative beliefs of their audiences, and

accordingly of the influence and reception of different theories of just war.

The main aim of this article is to provide an example of how such an analysis

could be undertaken, using the case of the Swedish intervention in the Thirty

Years War in . Three aspects of this event render it particularly appealing

as a case study. The kings of the Swedish branch of the Vasa dynasty, having

usurped the throne from the Polish Vasas, were extremely keen to legitimize

their foreign policy because of their lack of international recognition.""

Secondly, the intervention was rather difficult to justify, as we shall see later.

And finally, the ruling king Gustavus Adolphus was well aware of both

traditional and modern theories of just war, being for example an eager reader

of De iure belli ac pacis, a very recent publication () by Hugo Grotius."# In

a word, Swedish rulers had the will, the need, and the theoretical devices to

* See Andreas Gestrich, Absolutismus und Or ffentlichkeit : politische Kommunikation in Deutschland zu

Beginn des ��. Jahrhunderts (Go$ ttingen, ), pp. – ; Herfried Mu$ nkler, Im Namen des Staates:

die BegruX ndung der Staatsraison in der fruX hen Neuzeit (Frankfurt a. M., ) ; Michael Stolleis, Arcana

imperii und ratio status: Bemerkungen zur politischen Theorie des fruX hen ��. Jahrhunderts (Go$ ttingen, )."! Without denying the force of D. Welch’s argument that the prevailing ‘realist ’ understanding

of international relations has prompted historians to ignore the significance of the motive of

‘ seeking justice ’ as a cause of wars, I cannot see how this could be substantiated for seventeenth-

century Europe. David A. Welch, Justice and the genesis of war (Cambridge, )."" See Ringmar, Identity, pp. –."# Hedley Bull, ‘The importance of Grotius in the study of international relations ’, in Bull,

Kingsbury, and Roberts, eds., Hugo Grotius, pp. –, at p. ; also a letter from Grotius to

N. Reigersberch in July : ‘De soon van Camerarius is resident van Sweden, heeft aen mij

geschreven betuygende de goede affectie von sijnen coning tot mij ’, P. C. Molhuysen, ed.,

Briefvisseling van Hugo Grotius, : ����–���� (Rijks geschiedkundige publikatie$ n: Grote serie, ,

S-Gravenhage, ), p. ; for Gustavus Adolphus’s attitudes to war, see Lars Gustafsson, Virtus

politica: politisk etik och nationellt svaX rmeri i den tidigare stormakttidens litteratur (Uppsala, ),

pp. –.

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justify their engagement in Germany, which eventually led to a conscious and

rather sophisticated propaganda campaign.

Considering the present state of research into the legitimations of war, a case

study seems to be justified. Neither Konrad Repgen, who in was the first

to point to war manifestos as interesting source material, nor Hermann Weber,

who took up his appeal by providing a case study of the French legitimation of

her attack on Spain in , have related specific arguments in legitimations to

contemporary normative ideas of just war."$ The same applies to the historians

who have interpreted the centrepiece of the Swedish legitimation, the Manifesto

of July . Even if they have touched upon the theoretical framework of this

text,"% they have stated plainly that it was in full accordance with modern

international law,"& implying the existence of a universally acknowledged body

of normative precepts rather than a number of competing arguments of

different traditions and theorists as was actually the case in the seventeenth

century. However, as my analysis will show, the complicated logic of the

Manifesto becomes understandable only against the background of these

different theories.

Another shortfall is, I will argue, that the historians have focused their

attention solely on the Manifesto, without paying sufficient attention to the

development of the Swedish strategy of legitimation during the years both

before and after intervention. In fact, this strategy underwent significant

changes after when the State Council (Riksrac d) for the first time discussed

the justness of a possible entry into the German war."' What the Manifesto says,

"$ Konrad Repgen, ‘Kriegslegitimationen in Alteuropa: Entwurf einer historischen Typologie ’,

Historische Zeitschrift, (), pp. – ; idem, ‘Was ist ein Religionskrieg? ’, Zeitschrift fuX rKirchengeschichte, (), pp. – ; idem, ‘Krieg und Kriegstypen’, in Konrad Repgen,

DreißigjaX hriger Krieg und WestfaX lischer Friede: Studien und Quellen (Paderborn, Vienna, Munich, and

Zurich, ), pp. – ; Hermann Weber, ‘Zur Legitimation der franzo$ sischen Kriegserkla$ rung

von ’, Historisches Jahrbuch, (), pp. –. Weber explains the changing strategy of

French legitimation in various documents solely by ‘different conceptions of French foreign

policies ’ (p. ), without examining the possibility that different ideas of what is justifiable to the

foreign audiences might have influenced the strategy as well."% Several historians have not, e.g., Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus: a history of Sweden,

����–���� ( vols., London, ), , p. ; Sigmund Goetze, Die Politik des schwedischen

Reichskanzlers Axel Oxenstierna gegenuX ber Kaiser und Reich (Kiel, ), pp. –."& E.g. Diethelm Bo$ ttcher, ‘Propaganda und o$ ffentliche Meinung im protestantischen

Deutschland, – ’ [], in H. U. Rudolf, ed., Der DreißigjaX hrige Krieg (Darmstadt, ),

pp. –, here n. at p. ; and Geoffrey Symcox, War, diplomacy and imperialism, ����–����

(London, ), p. ."' Usually the Council discussed such questions first, in the form of a pro and contra

argumentation; after this the king presented the conclusions to the Diet (Riksdag), which then

made the final political decision. On this procedure see Leif AI slund, ‘Pro et contra et consultatio

i -talets svenska riksra/ d (–) ’, Samlaren, (), pp. –. The discussions are

published in: Svenska riksrac dets protokoll ( vols., Stockholm, –), – ; Nils Ahnlund,

‘O> fverla$ ggningarna i riksra/ det om tyska kriget, – ’, Historisk tidskrift, (),

pp. – ; Arkiv till upplysning om Svenska krigens och krigsinraX ttningarnes historia ( vols., Stockholm,

–), ; and discussed in Sverker Arnoldsson, ‘Krigspropagandan i Sverige fo$ re trettioa/ riga

kriget ’ [], in Go$ ran Rystad, ed., Historia kring trettioac riga kriget (Stockholm, ), pp. – ;

and Gustafsson, Virtus politica, pp. –.

and even more importantly, what it does not say, can be appreciated only in

this context. In what follows, I try to analyse this text as a part of a long-term

Swedish strategy of legitimation, both in the theoretical context of the

conflicting theories of international law and in the practical context of the

particular circumstances of the Thirty Years War. I will begin with a brief

survey of the circumstances of the intervention and of the content of the

Manifesto before proceeding to the analysis of its specific arguments in these

contexts.

I

The first twelve years of the constitutional and religious conflict in Germany,

which later became known as the Thirty Years War, was a story of the

comprehensive failure of the Protestant cause, so that by the Protestants

seemed to be on the verge of the final defeat."( The unsuccessful rising of the

Bohemian nobility was followed by the expulsion of the ‘Winter king’ Frederick

V, the Elector Palatine, from his possessions and the recatholization of both

Bohemia and Palatinate. The anti-Habsburg alliance between England,

Denmark, the Netherlands, and the exiled Frederick, formed in December

in The Hague, ultimately failed to relieve the Protestants. The king of

Denmark, Christian IV, who had entered the war in in his capacity as the

protector of the Lower-Saxon Circle of the Empire, was defeated a few years

later by the army of the Catholic Liga and the imperial army of Wallenstein.

Thereafter the two armies roamed freely in the Protestant territories of

northern Germany and guaranteed the execution of the imperial policy. The

dukedom of Mecklenburg was confiscated for the co-operation of the dukes

with Denmark, and given as a fief to General Wallenstein.") Pomerania, the

other large Protestant territory on the Baltic coast, was forced to accept

imperial garrisons in its cities. Only Stralsund resisted this order and was able

to sustain the ensuing siege by Wallenstein in the summer of , with the

assistance of Denmark and Sweden. The offensive of the militant Counter-

Reformation peaked with the imperial Edict of Restitution passed in March

which enforced the Catholic understanding of the religious peace of

Augsburg (), returning all bishoprics secularized since to the Catholic

church."*

Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedish government had keenly followed the

adverse developments in Germany, being particularly worried about the push

of two Catholic armies to the north and the preparations of Wallenstein to

"( For good brief introductions in the history of the Thirty Years War, see Ronald G. Asch, The

Thirty Years War: the Holy Roman Empire and Europe, ����–���� (New York, ) ; and Georg

Schmidt, Der DreissigjaX hrige Krieg (nd edn, Munich, ).") The dukedom had been divided in between Adolphus Frederick and Hans Albrect. For

confiscations of the property of ‘Reichsrebellen’ during the war, see Christoph Kampmann,

Reichsrebellion und kaiserliche Acht (Mu$ nster, )."* For the Protestants in northern Germany it meant the loss of the archbishoprics of Bremen

and Magdeburg, and seven further bishoprics. Schmidt, Der DreißigjaX hrige Krieg, p. .

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build an imperial navy in the Pomeranian port Wismar which would endanger

the sea supremacy of the Protestant powers Sweden, Denmark, England, and

the Netherlands. In order to avoid the subjugation of another maritime base,

Stralsund, Sweden concluded in a defensive alliance with the town and

sent the first contingent of troops on to German soil. By the Swedish

leaders had decided, for a mixture of political, strategic, and religious reasons,#!

to embark on a more serious military campaign in Germany. The peace treaty

with Poland in September gave Sweden free hand to do that. At the end

of June Gustavus Adolphus landed with his army in Pomerania,

unleashing a lengthy conflict with the imperialists which was eventually settled

with the Peace of Westphalia in .

The Swedish explanation of the reasons for the intervention, which is the

subject of this article, was most comprehesively presented in the pamphlet

known as Gustavus Adolphus’s Manifesto.#" It was composed by the secretary of

state Johan Adler Salvius under the supervision of the king himself,## and

published in Stralsund both in Latin and in German immediately after the

landing of Swedish troops in Pomerania. The number of different translations

and editions – five Latin, fourteen German, two Dutch, one French, and one

English edition are preserved, most of them printed in #$ – bears witness to

the importance attached to the Manifesto as the official statement of the

Swedish cause. Although its primary target group were the German Protestant

Estates of the Empire whose support was essential for the success of the

campaign, the intended audiences included all major potential allies of Sweden

in Europe, particularly England, the Netherlands, and France.#%

#! There is neither space nor need to dwell here on the Swedish motivation which has been

extensively discussed in literature. Perhaps the best explanation of Swedish imperialism is offered

by Michael Roberts, The Swedish imperial experience, ����–���� (Cambridge, ), pp. –, which

should be complemented with the argument of Ringmar, Identity. Cf. Goetze, Die Politik, pp. –.

A historiographical survey on the explanations of the intervention is provided by Sverker

Oredsson, Geschichtsschreibung und Kult : Gustav Adolf, Schweden und der DreißigjaX hrige Krieg (Berlin,

). For the political and diplomatic circumstances of the intervention see Nils Ahnlund, Gustav

Adolf infoX r tyska kriget (Stockholm, ), and Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, .#" Original title : Caussae ob quas … Dominus Gustavus Adolphus … tandem coactus est Cum exercitu in

Germaniam movere. Stralsundi excusae Mense Julio Anni MDCXXX. I use the first German edition:

Vrsachen, Dahero … Herr Gustavus Adolphus … Endlich gleichfalls gezwungen worden, mit dem Kriegsvolck

in Deutschland uX berzusetzen vnnd zuverrucken. Auss dem Lateinischen verdeutschet. Stralsund, Im Monat Julio

Anno MDCXXX, which is reprinted in Michael Caspar Lundorp, Acta publica ( vols.,

Frankfurt a. M., –), , pp. –, and in Goetze, Die Politik, pp. –.## Sune Lundgren, Johan Adler Salvius: problem kring freden, krigsekonomien och maktkampen (Lund,

), p. ; Ahnlund, Gustav Adolf, pp. , .#$ See the bibliography of the collection of the Royal Library in Stockholm: G. E. Klemming,

Samtida skrifter roX rande Sveriges foX rhac llanden till fremmande magter ( vols., Stockholm, –), and

Bo$ ttcher, ‘Propaganda’, p. n.#% The king himself did not specify certain target groups, but referred to the ‘world’ as the

audience of legitimation, e.g. in Dec. at the Council : ‘Can it [the intervention] be regarded

as a just war on our side, so that we can not only wage it with good conscience but can also justify

it to the whole world? ’, Ahnlund, ‘O> fverla$ ggningarna’, p. ; in Aug. to the Elector of

Saxony: ‘zumahl es nunmehr weldkundig, aus was Ursachen wir mit unser Armee in Teutschlandt

The mixed confessions of the audiences complicated the compilation of the

Manifesto. On the one hand, Sweden could not present herself as the saviour of

Protestantism since the legitimation had to be interconfessionally valid; on the

other hand, she had to satisfy the expectations of the Protestants who saw the

conflict in Germany as a part of the universal struggle for the survival of

Protestantism against the militant Counter-Reformation. Sweden also had to

take into account the constitutional tensions in Germany. The anxiety about

aggressive Catholicism was connected to a pan-European fear of the Habsburg

hegemony, particularly of its Spanish branch.#& The project of universal

monarchy and the aggressive Counter-Reformation implied the enforcement

of the arbitrary government at the cost of the liberties of the Estates. Hence the

German Protestants considered the protection of their religious rights to be

inseparably connected to the preservation of their political status within the

Empire.

To judge by its form, the Manifesto is not a juridical kind of pro and contra

dispute but a narrative of the events since which ultimately led Sweden to

intervene. It is a Manichean story of good and evil, clearly with an allusion to

the universal confessional conflict but carefully avoiding religious argumen-

tation. On one side stands Gustavus Adolphus whose sole aim is to preserve

peace and friendship with neighbouring countries in order to promote

commerce and industry to the advantage of all ; on the other side, the aggressive

‘peace-haters, the Jesuits and their assistants ’.#' According to the Manifesto, the

king was invited by ‘many German Estates ’ to intervene already when ‘the fire

burned only in Upper Germany’ in order to ‘extinguish it with united powers ’,

reminding that it would sooner or later spread to the north and put Sweden in

danger. Although Sweden had both the opportunity and a just cause to

intervene because her ‘ friends and relatives were oppressed and asked for

assistance’, the king refused to take up arms, trying to settle the conflict

through peaceful means.#( This is the basic repetitive structure of the Manifesto :

angelanget ’, Gustav Droysen, ed., SchriftstuX cke von Gustav Adolf zumeist an evangelischen FuX rstenDeutschlands (Stockholm, Paris, and Leipzig, ), p. .

The form and content of the Manifesto indicate that its audiences were political elites, rather than

common people. For Swedish popular propaganda see Silvia Serena Tschopp, Heilsgeschichtliche

Deutungsmuster in der Publizistik des DreißigjaX hrigen Krieges: pro- und antischwedische Propaganda in

Deutschland, ����–���� (Frankfurt a. M., ) ; Wolfgang Harms, ‘Gustav Adolf als Christlicher

Alexander und Judas Makkabaeus: zu Formen des Wertens von Zeitgeschichte in Flugschrift und

illustriertem Flugblatt um ’, Wirkendes Wort, (), pp. – ; Elmer A. Beller,

Propaganda in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War (Princeton, ) ; Renata W. Shaw, ‘Broadsheets

of the Thirty Years ’ War’, Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, (), pp. – ; Werner

Milch, ‘Gustav Adolf in der deutschen und schwedischen Literatur’, Germanistiche Abhandlungen,

(), pp. –.#& See Franz Bosbach, Monarchia universalis : ein politischer Leitbegriff der fruX hen Neuzeit (Go$ ttingen,

), ch. . Cf. Jonathan Scott, England ’s troubles (Cambridge, ), pp. –.#' Manifesto, p. . I refer to the original pagination given in Goetze’s edition (see n. ).#( Manifesto, pp. –.

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the peaceful intentions of the king were always met with new hostile activities

by Sweden’s adversaries, until eventually the intervention became unavoid-

able. Significantly, the Manifesto never uses the term ‘war’.

The specific events recounted in the Manifesto start with the interception of

the letter of Gustavus Adolphus to the prince of Transylvania and the

imprisonment of his couriers in , and the hindering of the peace between

Sweden and Poland in the same year. The year saw imperial military

backing being given to Poland, the hindrance of Swedish trade, the confiscation

of merchandise, and the occupation of Baltic ports with the intention of

creating a Baltic fleet to the disadvantage of Sweden. The next cases,

meticulously presented in the Manifesto, were those of the Swedish assistance to

Stralsund in and the humiliating denial of participation in the Lu$ beck

peace negotiations between Denmark and the Emperor for the Swedish

ambassadors at the beginning of . Thereafter, a possible counter-argument

that Sweden avoided a peaceful solution during and is refuted with

the claim that the king saw no real intention on the part of his enemies to reach

a treaty.#)

In the final part of the Manifesto the foremost injuries are repeated and the

rhetorical question posed, whether it is not evident that ‘an injured sovereign

to whom compensation has been denied’ has ‘ the right of punishment,

according to the agreement of nations, right reason and the very instinct of

nature’. And, since the enemy had actively attempted to ruin him, dismissing

all peaceful means of settlement, does he not have ‘ ius defensionis … the right to

repel force by force? ’ The king wished that ‘all Christendom would judge

whether or not he has been forced to take up arms by extreme necessity to

defend his security ’.#*

The Manifesto ends with a statement about the purpose of the Swedish

expedition and with a claim that this attack did not alter the state of neutrality

between Sweden and the Empire :

If His Majesty had in any manner favoured the enterprises of the Emperor’s and the

Empire’s enemies, or if he had entered into a league and association with them, people

would not be surprised if they paid him back in his own coin: but having always

persisted in a resolution to live in peace and constantly continued in the amity and

neutrality of both parties during the wars of Germany without having ever given any

cause of suspicion or offence … For which cause His said Majesty of Sweden having no

designs to the prejudice of the Empire, against which he protests he has no quarrel or

enmity whatsoever, has only taken up arms for his own, his people’s and public freedom,

for as long as his friends and neighbours will be put in the same state, in which the entire

neighborhood flourished before this war, and by these means to create a secure future

for the town of Stralsund, the Baltic sea and the kingdom of Sweden.$!

The imperialist politicians and pamphleteers were eager to reveal the weakest

#) Ibid., pp. –. #* Ibid., pp. –. $! Ibid., pp. –.

links in the chain of Swedish legitimation.$" They centred their accusations

around three arguments. First, as the Emperor himself emphasized, the

Swedish side breached the state of peace with the Empire, although the latter

had ‘had no enmity against the crown of Sweden nor given any reason for

misunderstandings or hostilities ’.$# The Electors also claimed that they had

‘after careful consideration of all the circumstances not discovered that the king

had any rightful reason to accuse the Empire in any matter ’. In their opinion,

the Emperor had ‘directum dominum’ to restore justice in Lower Saxony

which means that his troops on the Baltic coast were directed neither against

Sweden nor against any other foreign prince. The Electors ‘assumed that the

Emperor would be well excused for having assisted Poland because of the

neighbourhood and the close relationship’, alluding ironically to the struc-

turally similar Swedish claim of the rightfulness of their assistance to Stralsund.

If Sweden really intended the attainment of general peace, they should not

assist the ‘rebels ’ but leave Germany.$$ Thus the Swedish intervention was, as

the final decision of the Regensburg Electoral meeting put it, ‘an unjustified

and hostile attack’ against the Empire as a whole.$%

The second point against Sweden was that she had never seriously tried to

solve her differences with the Empire through peaceful means. The Emperor

juxtaposed his activities for ‘ totius Imperii salus ’ and his constant attempts to

establish general peace with Sweden’s reluctance to negotiate, particularly

considering her failure to send representatives to the agreed negotiations in

Danzig in April .$& And third, as the final decision of the Electoral meeting

at Regensburg emphasized, Sweden violated the requirement of a public

declaration of war.$'

Thus Sweden was accused of waging an unprovoked, unnecessary, and

$" In general, the Protestants ‘retained the crushing superiority in the propaganda war’ (see

Geoffrey Parker, ed., The Thirty Years’ War (London and New York, ), p. ). For an

explanation of this see Tschopp, Heilsgeschichtliche, pp. ff.$# The Emperor in his published proposal to the Electoral meeting at Regensburg, Zwo kopeyen

einer von der RoX m. Kays. auch zu Ungarn und BoX haimb May. dem zu Regensburg vorsamblet gewesenen

ChurfuX rstlichen Collegio, gethanen und abgelesenen Propositionen [ July ] (n.p., ), p. .$$ The reply of Electors to the letter of Gustavus Adolphus from Apr., Copia oder Inhalt

Schreibens, So die gesambten ChurfuX rsten von Regensburg auß an die KoX nigl. Mayest. zu Schweden [ Aug.

] (n.p., ) ; Lundorp, Acta publica, , pp. –. Cf. Bo$ ttcher, ‘Propaganda’, pp. –.

For other documents of the Electoral meeting, see Dieter Albrecht, ed., Briefe und Akten zur Geschichte

des DreißigjaX hrigen Krieges. Neue Folge: die Politik Maximilians I von Bayern und seiner VerbuX ndeten,����–���� (Mu$ nchen, ), part , vol. .

$% Entlicher Regenspurgischer Abschied und Schluß … wegen unverhoffter Einbruchs des KoX nigs von

Schweden auff den Teutschen Boden [ Nov. ] (Regensburg, ), p. ; Albrecht, ed., Briefe und

Akten, pp. –.$& Zwo kopeyen, pp. –. Ringmar shows that after concluding the truce of Altmark with Poland

in September, Sweden had decided to go to war no matter what the policy of the Emperor would

be, and therefore avoided serious negotiations with him (Identity, pp. ff). Similarly Repgen,

‘Krieg und Kriegstypen’, p. . For these failed negotiations, see Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, ,

pp. –.$' ‘ohn alle vorgehende feindliche denunciation unterstanden’, Entlicher Regenspurgischer

Abschied, p. ; Albrecht, ed., Briefe und Akten, pp. –.

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undeclared war against the Emperor and the Empire. In the context of the

contemporary theories of just war, these accusations were extremely powerful.

All early modern theorists of ius gentium endorsed three fundamental conditions

of a just war as established by Thomas Aquinas in his Secunda secundae of Summa

theologiae, namely auctoritas principis, causa iusta and intentio recta.$( It meant that

war had to be waged by the authority of the sovereign, it required a material

cause (generally a wrong done by the other party), and its sole goal had to be

the establishment of a ‘ just peace’. The last condition implied another

important principle : this goal must have been unattainable without war, i.e.

war was permitted only as a last resort after all peaceful alternatives had been

exhausted. One more requirement concerned the formal aspect of war: it had

to be publicly declared so that its status as a public war waged by the authority

of the sovereign would be known to both contending parties and to the general

public.

In our case, of five commonly agreed requirements of a just war – lawful

authority, just cause, right intention, necessity, and the declaration – Sweden

seemed to have unconditionally fulfilled only the first. What was Sweden’s

strategy for refuting these accusations? To answer that question we should have

a closer look at how the specific arguments woven into the complicated fabric

of the Manifesto had developed during the years before the intervention and

what the status of these arguments in different theories of bellum iustum was.

II

As recently shown by Richard Tuck, there were two distinct traditions of

thinking about just war in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe,

termed by him as ‘ theological ’ or ‘ scholastic ’, and ‘humanist ’ languages.$)

The foundations for the theological tradition were laid by Augustine who

sought to reconcile the fundamental conflict between the pacifism of the New

Testament and the practice of warfare of the Christian Emperor.$* Augustine’s

ideas, which resurfaced in Gratian’s Decretum (c. ), were further developed

by canon lawyers and theologians of the following hundred years, and found

their systematization in the theology of Aquinas.%! The most eminent

representatives of this tradition in the early modern period were the Spanish

Dominicans Francisco de Vitoria (–) and Domingo de Soto (–

), and Jesuits Luis de Molina (–) and Francisco Sua! rez(–), who generally wrote their treatises on war as commentaries on

Aquinas’s Secunda secundae. It was, however, not exclusively a Catholic doctrine:

for example Loci theologici (–), by the professor of theology at Jena

Johannes Gerhard (–), clearly belonged to the same tradition (it has

$( St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae ( vols., London and New York, –), ,

aae, Qu. , . $) Tuck, The rights, pp. –.$* For Augustine’s ideas on war see especially Holmes, On war, ch. ; Russell, The just war,

ch. ; and Tuck, The rights, pp. –. %! Russell, The just war, pp. ff.

even been called ‘the Protestant Summa’). The intellectual roots of the

humanist just war theorists, on the other side, were in Roman authors such as

Cicero, Livy, and Tacitus. The purest representatives of this language were the

professor of jurisprudence at Oxford, Alberico Gentili (–), the author

of De iure belli (), the first systematic neo-Roman account of ius gentium ;%"

and Francis Bacon (–), who wrote several short treatises on war for

specific political purposes.%#

These traditions had fundamentally different preoccupations. The theo-

logians focused on the problem of individual sin, with the aim of providing a

rationale for Christian participation in war. They relied on the central

Augustinian principle that the killing of another human being was permissible

only as a response to a wrong committed by him: ‘For it is the iniquity of the

opposing side that imposes upon the wise man the duty of waging wars. ’%$ The

theologians thus argued that a war could not be just on both sides, otherwise

‘all the belligerents would be innocent, and consequently it would not be lawful

for either side to kill anyone on the other ’.%% Therefore they tried to establish a

set of comprehensive rules which would determine the guilty party in each

possible war. The humanists, on the other hand, were more concerned with the

preservation of the commonwealth than with the questions of guilt and

innocence. They attempted to define the universal rights of states, the

enforcement of which constituted a just war. The result of this shift of focus was

that the list of possible just causes presented by the humanists became

considerably longer than that of the theologians.

The views of these traditions diverged on several points that are particularly

relevant for the analysis of the Swedish legitimation. First I will discuss briefly

their ideas about the justness of the pre-emptive strike and then examine how

Sweden appealed to them in her legitimation; in the next part of the article I

will examine the theories of humanitarian intervention and their application in

practice. In order to tackle the issue of pre-emptive attack, we should first note

that both traditions made a distinction between offensive and defensive wars.%&

For theologians, the self-defence was one of three basic causae of just war, next

%" On Gentili see Tuck, The rights, pp. – ; and Diego Panizza, Alberico Gentili, giurista ideologo

nell’Inghilterra elisabettiana (Padova, ).%# For Bacon’s ideas on war see Markku Peltonen, Classical humanism and republicanism in English

political thought, ����–���� (Cambridge, ), pp. – ; Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton,

), pp. –.%$ Augustine, The city of god against the pagans, ed. Robert Dyson (Cambridge, ), bk ,

ch. ; cf. Francisco Vitoria, ‘On the law of war’ [], in A. Pagden and J. Lawrance, eds.,

Francisco de Vitoria: political writings (Cambridge, ), . . § ; Sua! rez, ‘On war’, ch. , §.%% Vitoria, ‘On the law of war’, . . Similarly Sua! rez, ‘On war’, ch. , § ; idem, ‘A treatise on

laws and God the lawgiver ’, in Selections, pp. –, here bk , ch. , §§–.%& Theologians Vitoria (‘defensive ’ and ‘offensive ’ wars), ‘On the law of war’, . ; and Sua! rez

(‘defensive ’ and ‘aggressive ’ wars), ‘On war’, ch. , §§– ; humanists Alberico Gentili (‘defensive ’

and ‘offensive ’ wars), On the law of war, : The translation of the edition of ���� (Oxford and London,

), bk , chs. – ; and Justus Lipsius (‘defence’ and ‘ invasion’), Sixe bookes of politickes or civil

doctrine (London, ), p. .

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to the recovery of property (recuperatio) and punishment for injuries (poena).

They, however, endorsed the fundamental Augustinian principle that all these

wars were rendered just by the injustice of the opposing side, which carried two

important implications. First, a defence was unjust when one had brought the

war along by one’s own injustice, and second, in order that a war might qualify

as a genuine self-defence, the wrong had to be already committed. The

Ciceronian ‘vim vi repellere licet ’ was hence understood restrictively as ‘vim

illatam vi repellere licet ’%' which meant the exclusion of pre-emptive strike as

a just cause of war.

For the humanist thinkers, like Gentili and Bacon, the Ciceronian right of

self-defence acquired such a central position that it overruled the considerations

concerning who had committed the first injury. The defence was justified even

when one had oneself given the reason for war. Consequently, Gentili

challenged the very idea of looking for the objective justice in every war:

It is the nature of wars for both sides to maintain that they are supporting a just cause.

In general, it may be true in nearly every kind of dispute, that neither of the two

disputants is unjust … if it is doubtful on which side justice is, and if each side aims at

justice, neither can be called unjust.%(

It therefore became possible for him to approve both the pre-emptive attack

and the defence against it as just causes. Gentili divided both defensive and

offensive wars into three subcategories, according to their motive: wars on

grounds of necessity, expediency, or honour. Each of these could be a reason for

a just war. Whereas actual self-defence belonged to the category of necessary

defensive war, the pre-emptive attack against a potentially dangerous

adversary was self-defence on the grounds of expediency: ‘We ought not to

wait for violence to be offered us, if it is safer to meet it halfway … No one ought

to expose himself to danger … A defence is just which anticipates dangers that

are already meditated and prepared, and also those which are not meditated,

but are probable and possible. ’%)

Francis Bacon agreed with Gentili, holding a war caused by fear of another

state as a genuine self-defence: ‘I shall make it plaine; That Warre Preventive

upon Just Fears, are true Defensives, as well as upon Actuall Invasions. ’%*

Although he maintained that a fear is not justified ‘out of umbrages, light

jelousies, Apprehensions a farre off’ but only ‘out of clear foresight of imminent

Danger’, his examples suggest that ‘ the overgrowing Greatnesse ’ of another

country is a sufficient ground for iustus metus and hence for offensive war.&!

The Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius also admitted that the pre-emptive

attack might be regarded as a true defence, but he saw at the same time the

dangerous consequences of the doctrine of ‘ just fear ’. In his De jure belli ac pacis

%' Explicitly Johannes Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum cum pro adstruenda veritate, Tom. VI, cap. ��:

De magistratu politico (Jena, ), §. %( Gentili, On the law of war, bk , ch. .%) Gentili, On the law of war, bk , ch. . For the Roman roots of this view, see Tuck, The rights,

pp. ff. %* Bacon, ‘Considerations ’, p. . &! Ibid., pp. –.

Grotius argued directly against Gentili : ‘There is an intolerable doctrine in

some writers that by the law of nations we may rightly take up arms against a

power which is increasing, and may increase, so as to be dangerous.

Undoubtedly, in deliberating over war, this may come into consideration, not

as matter of justice, but as a matter of utility. ’&" He maintained that a present

and imminent danger was necessary, and not just general hostile attitudes

alone. The possible attack may be anticipated only if ‘ the aggressor be taking

up weapons, and in such a way that he manifestly does so with the intent to

kill ’.&#

Hugo Grotius attempted to reconcile the theological view that there is

always a guilty party in war with the right of states to defend their most vital

interests that are necessary for their self-preservation. He endorsed the

theological concept of war as a lawsuit where only one side could objectively be

just.&$ He also adopted the Augustinian view that only the injustice of the

enemy makes the war just&% and consequently rejected Gentili’s position that

the motive of expediency has equal status with necessity as a ground for lawful

war: ‘Utility does not generate a right in the way in which necessity does. ’&&

Yet Grotius could not deny the power of the prudential argumentation of

Gentili and other thinkers who maintained that if the injury would in all

likelihood be done, it could not be justly demanded that one wait until it

actually happen: ‘The first cause of a just war is an injury not yet done which

menaces body or goods. ’&' This new interpretation of Augustinian injuria

carried practical consequences not very far from those following from the

doctrine of Gentili.

Quite understandably the argument of self-defence was very appealing for

practical legitimations since a ‘ just ’ defence, as all theorists agreed, was

automatically legitimate, as opposed to offensive wars which required, in

addition to a causa iusta, the fulfilment of a set of additional conditions such as

public authority, right intention, necessity, and formal declaration.&( If Sweden

had managed to convince the world that the true nature of her expedition was

defensive, it would have freed her, for instance, from the burdensome reproach

that she did not use all possibilities to seek peace.

&" Hugo Grotius, The law of war and peace, : A translation of the edition of ���� (Oxford and

London, ), bk , ch. , §.&# Ibid., bk , ch. , §.. Discussed in Johnson, Ideology, pp. ff.&$ Since some commentators have misunderstood it (e.g. Johnson, Ideology, p. ), it should be

noted that Grotius used the term ‘iustum’ in at least three different meanings : objective justice

meant that all three conditions of just war (auctoritas, causa, intentio) were fulfilled; subjective justice

meant that the belligerent believed that they were fulfilled, and lastly, ‘ iustum sive solenne iuris

gentium’ signified a public and formal war apart from the considerations of causa and intentio,

which had the legal consequences of a state of war. Grotius’s distinction: The law of war and peace,

bk , ch. , §. ; bk , ch. , §.. Cf. Haggenmacher, Grotius, pp. –.&% Grotius, The law of war and peace, bk , ch. , §.. && Ibid., bk , ch. , §.&' Ibid., bk , ch. , §..&( Vitoria, ‘On the law of war’, . . § ; Sua! rez, ‘On war’, ch. , §, Gentili, On the law of war,

bk , chs. and ; Grotius, The law of war and peace, bk , ch. , §§–. Cf. Johnson, Ideology, p. .

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Considering the ideological context explicated above, it is quite remarkable

that Sweden did not appeal to the argument of pre-emptive attack in her public

legitimation. The situation described in the Manifesto actually resembled

conditions that Gentili or Bacon would have held sufficient to render a pre-

emptive defence lawful : the general designs of the ‘papists and Jesuits ’, the

imperial plans to build a navy against Sweden, and the other signs of a hostile

attitude. But the Manifesto mentioned the idea of prevention only once at the

beginning when it was claimed that although Sweden was exhorted to attack

pre-emptively, she still did not do so. When it came to the justification of the

actual intervention, the idea of pre-emption did not arise at all.

Yet the argument of pre-emptive defence was in no way unfamiliar to

Swedish leaders. Gustavus Adolphus had already used such reasoning more

than two years before the intervention, in January , when he explained at

the Diet that ‘ the Emperor and the papist Liga had conquered or oppressed

princes and towns of the Empire one after another ’ and that ‘ if God did not

stop him, he would soon approach the Swedish borders, so that we have

nothing else to expect but the ruin of our state or a long war’. The king asked

the Diet whether ‘we should sit still and allow the war to spread to within the

borders of the fatherland; or whether it is both right and good to carry the war

and its burdens to the country of the Emperor and the papists? ’&) Thus the king

made it clear that the conflict was inevitable and that a pre-emptive strike was

both legitimate and expedient. The Swedish estates agreed with this point and

pointed to the German princes who had believed that the danger did not

concern them and who were therefore subjected without resistance. Fur-

thermore, the evil intentions of the Emperor against Sweden and against her

dominion over the Baltic (Or stersjoX ns herradoX me) had become evident when he

sent his troops against Sweden to Prussia, hindered the peace negotiations with

Poland, and disturbed Swedish commerce. The estates therefore supported the

king in his design to hinder the Emperor’s expansion towards the Baltic sea, ‘ in

order to keep the war away from the borders of the patria for as long as

possible ’.&*

The arguments of the king and the representatives of the estates reflected

their belief that a pre-emptive attack may be justified in the face of the

overwhelming power and clearly hostile intentions of an enemy.The instigation

of fear of an imminent attack by the Emperor against Swedish territory was also

the tactics of the government in their domestic war propaganda.'! There is,

however, a crucial difference between these audiences : when people believe

that their own future survival is at stake, the argument of utile overweighs the

argument of iustum, or perhaps, as it was in that case, these arguments tend to

coincide. Yet neither Gustavus Adolphus nor the other members of the Council

were confident that the European audience would accept the argument of pre-

emption. Councillor Johan Skytte expressed such concerns on a regular pro and

&) Arkiv till upplysning, , p. . &* Ibid., p. .'! See Arnoldsson, ‘Krigspropagandan’, passim.

contra disputation at the Council when he presented the arguments for the

defence in Sweden (bellum domi gerendum). Significantly, his very first

argument – before seven further arguments of expediency – was that ‘defence

is a better cause than attack; we will not appear to be striving for the belongings

of the others like the camel who tried to catch the horn, and lost his ears ’.'"

Note that Skytte did not argue that the case of imminent danger cannot be

proved but, holding the ‘defence’ equal with ‘defence in home territory’, he

dismissed the very argument that the pre-emptive attack qualifies as a genuine

defence.

Gabriel Gustafsson Oxenstierna, representing the contra side, rejected the

arguments of Skytte as ‘more theological than political ’.'# This juxtaposition,

however, did not signify the conflicting normative views on the justness of pre-

emptive strike, but rather the different views about to what extent moral

considerations as such should influence the decision-making in this issue. He

argued for the intervention, but only in terms of expediency, not justness.

Neither did Gustavus Adolphus, who was familiar with the ideas of Grotius,

appeal to the humanist doctrine. When the Swedish rulers eventually decided

for an offensive, they sought other ways for legitimizing this.

One such possibility was to argue in terms of actual defence, which required

proving that the Emperor had already initiated the war. Such an attempt was

made by Gustavus Adolphus nearly a year later, in December , when he

presented his account of the situation in Germany to the Council, and asked

whether or not Sweden was in a ‘public war (oppenbart krijgh) with the

Emperor ’. On one side, the king explained, it can be doubted since the

Emperor had not declared war upon Sweden and allowed Sweden to continue

her trade in Germany. Moreover, Sweden was neither hostile towards him nor

gave any reason for war since the

relief to Stralsund did not happen against the Emperor or the Roman Empire but only

against a number of his self-willed commanders who had besieged the town not only

against his knowledge and will but also against his orders … and we inserted to our

treaty with Stralsund an express clause that this relief is not directed against the mediate

or immediate authorities of the town.

Yet the king believed the arguments for the opposite view to be more weighty:

the imperial side had designated the Swedish aid to Stralsund as a support to

rebels against their lawful authority and as such no less a hostility against the

Empire than the English aid to La Rochelle against the king of France. The

Emperor had not formally declared war, he argued, only because he was

waiting for a more favourable moment. From general designs of the ‘papists ’

'" Svenska riksrac dets protokoll, , p. . Lars Gustafsson has pointed out that Johannes Gerhard

presents the same example in his Locorum theologicorum, §, in connection with his warnings

against wars caused by ambitions and greed. Gustafsson, Virtus politica, p. .'# ‘Magis theologicum quam politicum, quia majora incommoda ad defensionem quam

offensionem sequuntur ; cum utilitate bellum inferimus, cum damno repellimus’, Svenska riksrac detsprotokoll, , p. .

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and the ‘house of Austria ’ (‘ intentions to uproot all evangelical Christians ’ and

to establish a ‘universal monarchy over the entire world’) and from specific

hostile acts against Sweden (the imperial assistance given to Poland and the

other incidents recounted later in the Manifesto), the king deduced that the

Emperor wanted to extend his territories, and Sweden could expect nothing

but a public war from him as soon as he was finished with the Protestant Estates

of the Empire.'$

Then Gustavus Adolphus performed an ingenious twist of argument and

transformed this ‘expected war’ into an actual war: ‘Since it is now clear that

we are subjected to a public war by the Emperor, the next question is whether

we could not only wage it with good conscience but also to justify it to the entire

world? One has no reason to doubt it. ’ The king presented the commonly

accepted doctrine of the justness of actual self-defence, ‘ to defend oneself from

violence and injustice is not only a command of nature and reason, and the law

of all nations in the world, but also a command of God’, and quoted widely

used passages from Cicero’s Pro milone, plus citations from historian Josephus,

civil lawyers Florentinus and Caius, and an example from the Old Testament

in support of this argument.'% Nearly all these quotations were directly

borrowed from a single paragraph in Grotius’s De jure belli ac pacis.'&

Swedish rulers continued in to consider the conflict with the Emperor

as a bellum actuale, though undeclared and thus not formal in the sense of

Grotian bellum solenne.'' Nevertheless, it was sufficient to consider the war as

already initiated by the Emperor and therefore the question for Sweden was

‘whether the war is to be continued offensively or defensively ’.'( This

sophisticated construction indicates most clearly the Swedish rulers’ lack of

belief in the humanist doctrine of pre-emptive defence. In order to convince

themselves of the justness of their cause, they appealed to the traditional

principle of actual self-defence which was recognized both by theologians and

humanists.

Yet it was much more difficult to apply this principle to the circumstances of

the conflict. How could one convincingly argue that the imperialists’

disapproval of the Swedish assistance to Stralsund indicated that they had

initiated hostilities, or that the Emperor’s assistance to Poland created an

actual war with Sweden, while the assistance of Sweden to Stralsund was not

even an injury against the Emperor?The Swedish leaders held this construction

'$ Ahnlund, ‘O> fverla$ ggningarna’, pp. –. '% Ibid., p. .'& Grotius, The law of war and peace, bk , ch. , §.. Cicero’s ‘Est haec non scripta sed nata

lex …’ (Pro milone, ) was used also, for instance, by A. Gentili (On the law of war, bk , ch. ), and

even by J. Gerhard (Locorum theologicorum, §). The only quotation not present in Grotius,

Cicero’s ‘Illud est non modo iustum, sed etiam necessarium, cum vi vis illata defenditur ’ (Pro

milone, ), was probably taken from Lipsius (Sixe bookes of politickes, ch. , §), as pointed out by

Gustafsson, Virtus politica, p. . For Cicero’s original quotations see N. H. Watts, ed., Cicero in

twenty-eight volumes, (London, ), pp. , .'' E.g. the discussion at the Council on Oct. : ‘A> r och reeda actuale bellum till land och

vatten, fast thet ikke a$ r solenne’, Svenska riksrac dets protokoll, , p. . For Grotius’s distinction see

n. . '( Ibid., p. . The emphasis is mine.

too fragile to be presented to a foreign audience, and the argument of a

genuinely defensive war never made it into the Manifesto. In Sweden’s

legitimation to the world, not the wrong done to herself, but the injuries done

to the other people and to the common security, became the primary material

cause for intervention. To analyse this part of the Swedish strategy, we must

examine the status of a war for the sake of others in the contemporary theories

and the applicability of these theories to the political system of the Empire.

III

The diverging ideas of different bellum iustum traditions on the justness of a war

for the sake of others can be best explained in relation to the familiar

Augustinian principle that only an injury committed by the other side makes

war just. The theologians interpreted that principle rather restrictively,

arguing that only injuries done to oneself, to one’s own subjects, or to allied

sovereigns counted as a just cause. Moreover, as Sua! rez explained, the

assistance to allies was permitted only when they themselves had a just cause to

fight and had asked for help.') Sua! rez vehemently rejected any assistance given

to the subjects of another sovereign: ‘Wherefore, the assertion made by some

writers, that sovereign kings have the power of avenging injuries done in any

part of the world, is entirely false, and throws into confusion all the orderly

distinctions of jurisdiction. ’

This was, of course, an attack against the humanist doctrine of what might

be called humanitarian intervention.'* In the humanist tradition we can,

again, discern two lines. Themoderate position ofGrotius endorsedAugustine’s

dictum but held that the injuries done to the subjects of other sovereigns could

also count as a just cause: ‘By natural law, each person has an executive power

to assert not only his own right, but also the right of others. Whence it follows,

that the causes which justify him whose interest is concerned, do also justify

those who help him.’(! The radical position of Gentili rejected Augustine’s

principle altogether and conceded the right of intervention even for the sake of

those sovereigns or subjects who were defending themselves against the just

punishment : ‘For if a war is just when its purpose is to ward off injury, even

though those who ward off the injury themselves gave cause for the war, it

would seem that the same thing may be established for the same reason with

regard to the defence of others even though they be subjects. ’(" Significantly,

neither Gentili nor Grotius required an explicit request of assistance. Gentili

even argued that the universal right to defend others, which was based on the

‘natural fellowship of human race’, was applicable even in the case of ‘ the

') Sua! rez, ‘On war’, ch. , §. Cf. Tuck, The rights, pp. – ; Jonathan Barnes, ‘The just war’,

in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., Cambridge history of later medieval

philosophy (Cambridge, ), pp. –, at p. .'* For the foundations of this doctrine see Tuck, The rights, pp. –.(! Grotius, The law of war and peace, bk , ch. , §.(" Gentili, On the law of war, bk , ch. .

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defence of one who neglects to protect himself ’ or ‘ the defence of one who

refuses to be protected by another ’.(#

Thus both Gentili and Grotius permitted uninvited intervention in the

conflicts within another state (or between independent sovereigns) if the

purpose was to ward off or punish ‘cruelties or tyranny’.($ Although this could

have been easily established in the case of the German war, Sweden did not

appeal to the humanist argument but attempted to present their venture as

being within the limits set by the theological writers : as a war for the cause of

allies who had a just cause and had asked for assistance. Against this

background we can understand the frantic attempts of Sweden until the very

eve of the intervention to conclude alliances with the Estates of the Empire or

at least to obtain written requests for assistance from them.(% Two months

before the intervention, in April , Gustavus Adolphus wrote to Anders

Svensson, his envoy in Germany, that he and the other envoys should

studiously persuade the princes of Mecklenburg, Lu$ neburg, Pomerania and others in

lower and upper Germany, but also the towns Lu$ beck, Hamburg, Bremen, Lu$ neburg,

Stettin and all the others, to write secretly to the king with a request to take over their

cause and to come with his army to Germany. You can very well understand how useful

such letters could be in the future.(&

At a Council meeting in May it was explicitly argued that without an

‘ invitation’ from the ‘oppressed’ a war could not be justified: ‘Quia nemo

oppressorum nos vocat ; ergo fundamentum belli deest. ’('

The failure of Sweden to obtain requests of assistance against the Emperor((

and thus a fundamentum belli is to be explained by the constitutional and political

situation of the Empire. Sweden’s strategy of ‘assisting allies ’ entailed an

appeal to BuX ndnisrecht, a quasi-sovereign right of the Estates of the Empire to

conclude foreign alliances (therefore the territorial town Stralsund did not

qualify as an ‘ally ’).() However, there was a generally accepted condition that

these alliances must not be directed against the Empire (exceptio Imperii). Even

after the Edict of Restitution of the Protestant Estates did not contest this,

nor did they appeal to the right of resistance against the ‘ tyrannical ’ Emperor.

Being politically and militarily overpowered, they saw in the preservation of

the constitutional order their only hope for future security against the Catholic

aggression. Therefore they were firmly committed not only to the constitutional

institutions of the Empire such as the Reichstag but also to the Emperor as the

symbol of the Empire’s unity.(* In the Protestant Estates still hoped to

(# Ibid., ch. . ($ E.g. Grotius, The law of war and peace, bk , ch. .(% On Swedish attempts to find allies in Germany, see Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, , pp. ff.(& Arkiv till upplysning, , p. . (' Svenska riksrac dets protokoll, , p. .(( The only invitation she had received was that of Stralsund which was not an Estate of the

Empire.() On Bu$ ndnisrecht see Fritz Dickmann, Der westfaX lische Frieden (Mu$ nster, ), pp. ff. ;

Friedrich v. Bezold, Das BuX ndnisrecht der deutschen ReichsfuX rsten bis zum westfaX lischen Frieden (Bonn,

) ; Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Bund’, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe ( vols., Stuttgart, –), ,

pp. –, especially pp. –. (* Asch, The Thirty Years War, pp. –.

reach a settlement with the Emperor)! and did not want to jeopardize it by a

co-operation with an openly hostile power.

The reluctance of the Protestant Estates of the Empire to assume the role of

allied states, and their own unwillingness to appeal to the humanist doctrine of

intervention, eventually forced the Swedish leaders to relinquish their hopes of

presenting the intervention as a genuine war. And this is, in my opinion, the

main point of the Manifesto : the Swedish intervention was not a ‘war’ at all but

a military action short of war, a sort of ‘police-action’ if we want to use the

modern term.)" It was an assistance to the Protestant Estates of the Empire in

a situation where the Emperor, their lawful protector, was unable or unwilling

to protect them against privateers who acted without legitimate authority. As

long as the Swedish attack was directed only against these people, it could not

acquire the status of public war which by definition required the equality of

adversaries as sovereigns. This explains why the Manifesto avoided the term

‘war’,)# most significantly in its title which used the expression ‘coactus est cum

exercitu in Germaniam movere’, instead of ‘bellum’.)$ It also explains why

Sweden did not submit a formal declaration of war, even though Swedish

politicians were fully aware of this requirement.)% The Manifesto was only a

substitute for the missing declaration: it made the attack publicly known and

proclaimed its official reasons, avoiding at the same time the legal implications

of the traditional declaration.

Fundamentally the Manifesto extended the justification of the assistance

given to Stralsund to the intervention as a whole. The Manifesto therefore takes

great care to prove that the town was attacked by the imperial general

Wallenstein not only against the constitution and laws of the Empire but also

against the command of the Emperor himself.)& The self-defence against this

attack was therefore fully lawful, and since neither the Emperor nor its

immediate sovereign, the duke of Pomerania, helped the town, it had to ask for

foreign assistance as permitted by the ‘ law and customs of nations ’.)' Sweden

was chosen for the very reason that she had been a neutral state unlike

Denmark. The attack on Pomerania in was, as this reasoning implied,

only a stronger response to the further hostilities of Wallenstein whom the

)! Schmidt, Der DreißigjaX hrige Krieg, p. .)" I owe this term to Prof. Cornelia Niekus Moore (Honolulu).)# It was thus not merely a ‘rhetorical trick’ as suggested in Bo$ ttcher, ‘Propaganda’, p. .)$ E.g. against Denmark in : Manifestum declarans causas, quibus Sac. R. M:tas Sueciae, permota

& adacta est, ad decernendum bellum, ac tuendum armis … adversus … Daniae Regis violentos & hostiles actus

ac conatus (Stockholm, ) ; against Poland in : Brevis ac praeliminaris enumeratio causarum ob

quas … Carolus Gustavus … coactus est Regem Poloniae bello adoriri (n.p., ).)% See Ahnlund, ‘O> fverla$ ggningarna’, p. .)& Manifesto, pp. –. Indeed, Stralsund had been informed by the imperial vice-chancellor von

Stralendorf that its acceptance of a garrison was by no means insisted upon by the imperial court,

thus giving the Stralsunders the chance to cite the imperial will against the imperial commander-

in-chief. A later letter from Ferdinand to Wallenstein, which only expressed doubts not a veto,

indicated though that Stralendorf went too far in his interpretation. See Golo Mann, Wallenstein

(London and New York, ), pp. ff. )' Manifesto, pp. –.

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Emperor was unable to bridle. Repeating the statement in the treaty between

Sweden and Stralsund from June ,)( the Manifesto claimed the ongoing

neutrality of Sweden towards the Empire.))

The legitimation of the intervention as a ‘non-war’ was by no means an ideal

solution for Sweden. First, it failed to create a formal state of war with ensuing

legal consequences such as the right to conquer territories iure belli. Therefore

it justified only a limited range of actions and aims, a fact which proved very

embarrassing for Sweden at the later stages of the war.)* Second, it was not

particularly convincing, especially after the Catholic Electors and the

Emperor – who had never denied that Wallenstein acted upon his

authority – had proclaimed at the Electoral meeting of Regensburg that the

attack was an undeclared offensive against the Empire, not against privateers.*!

The Electors also denied any right of Sweden to act on behalf of the Protestant

Estates : ‘The said king [Gustavus Adolphus] should interfere in the affairs of

the Empire … just as little as he would like to see other foreign princes

constraining his regalities and rights and commanding what he should do or

forbear from doing. ’*"

The advantage of the fiction of neutrality was, however, that it fitted neatly

with the fiction of the ‘Emperor’s innocence’ – the main tenet of the Protestant

propaganda in the late s.*# As one pamphleteer put it, the Emperor’s name

was only ‘borrowed’ in order to ‘deter everybody from hindering the intentions

of the papists and from repelling them, since nobody wants to be cried out as

a rebel and be punished’.*$ The war, another pamphlet claimed, was ‘ the work

of the papists and the Spanish who misuse the Emperor’s name as a mask to his

detriment’.*% Also the councillors of Catholic Bavaria argued in that the

)( See Herbert Langer, ‘Innere Ka$ mpfe und Bu$ ndnis mit Schweden: Ende des . Jahrhunderts

bis ’, in Herbert Ewe, ed., Geschichte der Stadt Stralsund (Weimar, ), pp. – ; Roberts,

Gustavus Adolphus, , pp. – ; Ahnlund, Gustav Adolf, pp. –.)) See the quotation at p. above.)* Particularly after the Peace of Prague between the Emperor and the German

Protestants, Sweden was repeatedly accused of extending her war aims further than the restitution

of the Protestant territories as stated in the Manifesto. Especially controversial was her wish for

territorial compensation. See e.g. the Danish anti-Swedish propaganda in –, particularly

Vortrab und Deduction der Cron Dennemarck (n.p., ), reprinted in Theatrum Europaeum ( vols.,

Frankfurt a. M., –), v, pp. ff. On Swedish later war aims see Sven Lundkvist, ‘Die

Schwedischen Kriegs- und Friedensziele, – ’, in Konrad Repgen, ed., Krieg und Politik,

����–����: europaX ische Probleme und Perspektiven (Munich, ), pp. –.*! Entlicher Regenspurgischer Abschied, p. .*" ‘Kayserlich spargierter Abschiedt ’ [ Nov. ], in Zwo kopeyen, p. .*# Cf. Bo$ ttcher, ‘Propaganda’, pp. –. The exploitation of the motive of the innocence of the

monarch seems to be a favoured polemic device in early modern Europe which enabled the head

of state to be criticized indirectly, thus avoiding the accusations of crimen laesae majestatis. For an

example see Thomas May, A breviary of the history of the parliament of England [] (London, ),

pp. ff. *$ Politischer Discurs vom jetzigen Kriege in Teutchland (n.p., ), fo. Bi.*% Hansischer Wecker, das ist Treuhertzige Warnung an die Erbare Hanse StaX dte (Gru$ ningen, ),

fo. Ai ; similarly Politischer Discurs, fo. Ai. Cf. M. Gru$ nbaum, Ur ber die Publizistik des DreißigjaX hrigenKrieges von ����–���� (Halle, ). For the influence of Jesuit confessors on Maximilian of Bavaria

and Ferdinand II, see Robert Bireley, Maximilian von Bayern, Adam Contzen, S.J., und die

Elector was entitled to conclude foreign alliances, since the Emperor was

unable to defend his ‘rights, land and people ’ against the ‘ tyrannis und

violentia ’ of Wallenstein, particularly considering the ‘ intention of the imperial

ministers to abolish the liberty of the Estates of the Empire and to turn them

into slavery’.*& Sweden could thus build her legitimation upon the widespread

sentiment among German princes and free towns against such ‘ foreign’ ideas

and practices that were believed to violate the tradition of ‘German liberty’,

and avoid at the same time direct confrontation with the Emperor.

For the same reason Sweden refrained in the original Latin and German text

of the Manifesto from direct references to ‘universal monarchy’. This was,

however, the context in which the events in Pomerania were placed in Catholic

and Protestant countries alike. It is intriguing to compare the original text of

the Manifesto to the French version printed in Le mercure francn ois a couple of

months after the intervention which, in turn, became the basis for the English

edition.*' The French editor integrated a new introduction into the text which

particularly emphasized the role of Gustavus Adolphus in stopping the

establishment of the universal monarchy:

It is notorious to all people and states of Christendom that the Spaniards and the House

of Austria have been always intent upon a Universal Monarchy, or at least designed the

conquest of the Christian states and provinces in the West, and particularly of the

principalities and free towns in Germany, where that House has made such a progress,

that if this brave and generous northern prince had not bestirred himself, and opposed

that torrent, she had pushed her ambition and arms to the most distant kingdoms and

provinces, which have hitherto preserved and maintained their liberty, notwithstanding

thousands of secret and open practices and threats made use of by Spaniards and their

partisans.*(

Also the internal discussions of the Council give evidence of the reluctance of

Sweden to confront the Emperor in a public war. At a Council meeting in

October Gustavus Adolphus had worried that ‘ it is difficult to use

German people (whom we must use) against their own patria and superiors ’.*)

In addition to the practical problem of recruiting soldiers, some councillors felt

uneasy about attacking the Holy Roman Empire, which still had an eminent

Gegenreformation in Deutschland, ����–���� (Go$ ttingen, ), and idem, Religion and politics in the age

of the counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, S.J., and the formation of the imperial

policy (Chapel Hill, ).*& Quoted from Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ‘Gleichgewichtsdenken und Gleichgewichtspolitik

zur Zeit des Teutschen Krieges ’, in Wolf D. Gruner, ed., Gleichgewicht und Gegenwart (Hamburg,

), pp. –, at p. .*' The difference between these versions has been pointed out by K. Repgen who also notes the

cautiousness of the original version. Repgen, ‘Krieg und Kriegstypen’, p. .*( The French original (Le mercure francn ois, , pp. ff) is reprinted in Jean Du Mont and

Jean Rousset, eds., Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens ( vols., Amsterdam, –), },

pp. –. The English text is reprinted in Symcox, War, pp. –, quotation at p. .*) Svenska riksrac dets protokoll, , p. .

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status among the other states. Johan Skytte’s first argument ‘contra

offensivum’ at the same meeting had been: ‘A natura monarchia … One

cannot so easily take him: esset contra Deum et conscientiam tentare

subversionem monarchiae. ’ Although the king suggested that the monarchy as

a body politic consisted of fundamental laws rather than of mortal persons,

implying his readiness to subvert the person of the Emperor,** it can be

assumed that he also found it easier not to appear to be seeking an open conflict

with him.

In addition to defining the enemy and the character of the venture, the other

important part of the legitimation was to offer an account of Swedish

motivation. Why did the Swedes put themselves at risk in order to maintain the

constitutional order in another country? Sweden stressed two different motives

in the Manifesto. The first was the assistance of people with whom Sweden had

many common bonds, such as ‘ friendship’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘kinship’,"!!

‘common religion, liberty and trade’, and ‘bond of honour’,"!" and therefore

a certain feeling of responsibility. However, such an altruistic and honourable

motive alone could hardly stand the scrutiny of the various foreign audiences.

Therefore the second motive was added: the protection of the security of the

region (‘gemeine Sicherheit ’) which was the necessary precondition of

Sweden’s own security. In this way the Swedes could adhere to the paradigm

of defence but without the implications of a defensive war. These two motives

were presented as inseparable in the Manifesto. The restoration of the pre-war

political and religious liberties of north German Estates was an honourable

mission to defend the ‘general liberty’. But the preservation of liberty and the

avoidance of the rule of tyranny in the region were not only ends in themselves,

but also the means to achieve the ends of Sweden: ‘ so that the kingdom of

Sweden could more confidently trust the firm security in the future’."!# Also, in

a letter to the Elector of Saxony in August , Gustavus Adolphus kept these

two motives tightly together. ‘Our purpose is, besides the honour of God, solely

the safeguarding of our kingdom, and the re-establishment of the oppressed

liberty of Germany. ’"!$ In addition to its enhanced credibility among foreign

readers, such an account of Sweden’s motivation had the further advantage of

being consistent with the domestic rhetoric."!%

We have now largely but not yet completely reconstructed the central

arguments of the Swedish legitimation. One motive yet to be discussed is the

** ‘Omnes monarchias transivisse de una familia in aliam. Romana inter centum familias ab

una in aliam. Non constitit in personis sed in legibus monarchia, ’ ibid., p. . For the similar ideas

of the German Protestants, see Asch, The Thirty Years War, p. ."!! E.g. Manifesto, p. . ‘von ihren Anverwandten umb Hu$ lff … ersuchet ’. Gustavus Adolphus

had indeed many relatives among the German princes, e.g. George William, Elector of

Brandenburg, John Casimir of Pfalz-Zweibru$ cken and Frederick Ulric of Brunswick-Wolfenbu$ ttel(brothers-in-law), Frederick III of Holstein-Gottorp (cousin), Frederick V, Elector of Palatinate

(great-great-grandson of Gustavus Vasa), etc. "!" Manifesto, pp. , , ."!# Ibid., p. . "!$ Droysen, ed., SchriftstuX cke, p. ."!% See the decisions of the Diet in May , Arkiv till upplysning, , pp. –, and the statements

of the king at the Council in Oct. and May , Svenska riksrac dets protokoll, , p. ; , p. .

punishment for injuries committed against Sweden. The Manifesto recited a

litany of different injuries, claiming several times that ‘according to the law of

nations (VoX lcker Recht) ’ these would have been a sufficient reason for

punishment. However, the intervention was not presented as a vindictive war.

Rather, the argument of injuries fulfilled the function of proving the peaceful

disposition of Gustavus Adolphus as opposed to the bellicosity of the turbatores

pacis : despite repeated injuries from their side he abstained from the resort to

arms for so many years.

A more important aspect to be discussed is the argument of religious war,

which some historians have held to be the centrepiece of the Swedish

legitimation."!& Indeed, considering that the European Protestants saw the

conflict in Germany as a part of the universal fight for the survival of

Protestantism, the Manifesto was automatically read in confessional terms. But

against this background in particular, the argument of religious struggle

played a remarkably modest role in the official legitimation. In the Manifesto,

we find the confessional argument only in three contexts. First, the enemies in

war were partly religiously motivated; second, one of many bonds between

Sweden and the assisted Estates was their common religion; and third, the

purpose of Sweden was to re-establish political and religious liberties in

Germany. The religious motive was thus always connected with the political.

Such expressions as ‘Our purpose is, besides the honour of God’"!' or ‘God

wants our king to continue his heroic and Christian attack’"!( which were used

in the domestic propaganda and among a more narrow circle of Protestant

rulers, had no place in the Manifesto.

The common misunderstanding of the true nature of the official Swedish

propaganda has apparently been prompted by the powerful religious propa-

ganda among German Protestants. There, indeed, we encounter the figure of

Gustavus Adolphus as the fulfiller of the Biblical prophecies, a warrior of God

comparable with the heroes of the Jewish people, and so on."!) However, this

campaign did not represent the ‘official ’ position of the Swedish state, but was

mainly carried out by the radical Protestant priests and pamphleteers in

Germany, even if sometimes encouraged by the Swedish agents."!* The

audiences of such propaganda were not the elites, and it therefore mainly took

the form of illustrated broadsheets, rather than sophisticated pamphlets.

Finally, the pro-Swedish propaganda in Germany became religious only after

"!& E.g. Philip M. Taylor : ‘Gustavus Adolphus ’ War Manifesto, justifying his involvement to the

German people as an act of religious liberation …’, in Munitions of the mind (Manchester and New

York, ), p. . R. Asch describes the defence of the Protestant faith in weaker terms as ‘a

convenient justification for intervention’, The Thirty Years War, p. ."!' Gustavus Adolphus to the Elector of Saxony in Aug. , Droysen, ed., SchriftstuX cke, p. ."!( The decision of the Diet in May , Arkiv till upplysning, , pp. –."!) E.g. Mattha$ us Lungvitium, Dreyfacher Schwedischer Lorbeer Krantz (Leipzig, ). See also

literature in n. ."!* One such agent was Christoph Ludwig Rasche in Hamburg. Felix Berner, Gustav Adolf: der

LoX we aus Mitternacht (Stuttgart, ), pp. –.

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the battle of Breitenfeld in autumn , the first major victory over the

imperialists.""!

Sigmund Goetze and Geoffrey Symcox rightly explain the lack of appeal to

religious motivation in the Manifesto with the argument that the intervention

had to be approved by Sweden’s Catholic ally France.""" But besides the

immediate political context, we must also take into account the broader

context of an ideological contest between two confessions, both claiming to be

engaged in a defensive struggle. The Emperor presented the imperial campaign

in northern Germany always in political terms, as a defence of the constitution

against the rebellious Estates.""# Even if the Catholic propagandists admitted

that religion was at stake as well, they still emphasized that the Catholic princes

were forced to defend their religion ‘nicht offensive’.""$ Similarly, the

Protestants claimed that the character of the struggle was not an offensive fight

for the true religion, but a defence of their constitutional liberties which

included their religious rights.""%

The general rejection of religious war can partly be explained by the status

of aggressive religious war in contemporary ideology. All major theorists, from

Catholics such as Vitoria and Sua! rez, Protestants such as Luther and Gerhard,

to the humanists such as Gentili and Grotius, unequivocally condemned war

for the enforcement of ‘right religion’.""& In this context we can speak of two

completely different arguments : the defence of religion and the religious or

‘holy ’ war. The former did not imply the latter ; the free practice of religion was

rather one of those ‘ liberties ’ or ‘rights ’ the defence of which was as lawful as

the defence of any other property.""' In her propaganda to the wider audience,

Sweden stressed the former and was careful to avoid the impression of a

genuinely religious war. Sweden therefore deliberately overshadowed the

confessional aspect with the political arguments about the defence of the

German constitution and the protection of common security. The ‘secular ’

character of religious argumentation was well conveyed by the chancellor of

the state Axel Oxenstierna when in he told the State Council that religion

was not our principalis scopus. His late Majesty had other large causes of war. True it is,

that religion ought not to be propagated armis, but its arma are rather spiritualia, as preces

and lacrymae ; but the true principalia scopus is, that regnum Sueciae and consortes religionis

nostrae may remain in security, and be in their esse preserved, tam in statu ecclesiastico quam

""! Tschopp, Heilsgeschichtliche, pp. ff.""" Goetze, Die Politik, p. ; Symcox, War, p. .""# Kayserliches Manifestum oder WohlgegruX ndete Deduction (Vienna, ) ; Zwo kopeyen, passim. Cf.

Kampmann, Reichsrebellion, passim.""$ Zweyfacher Soldaten Spiegel, das ist Trewherziger Discurs (n.p., ), fo. Bij.""% E.g. Magna horologii Campana [ Jan. ] (n.p., ), pp. –.""& Vitoria, ‘On the law of war’, . , § ; Sua! rez, ‘On war’, ch. ; for Luther see Elert,

Morphologie des Luthertums ( vols., Munich, ), , p. ; Gerhard, Locorum theologicorum, § ;

Gentili, On the law of war, bk , ch. ; Grotius, The law of war and peace, bk , ch. , §.""' For instance Gerhard: ‘An ob religionis defensionem arma capienda? Resp: de causa subditi

injuste ab hoste opprimuntur, sive religionis, sive libertatis, sive alius quidam praetextus quaeratur,

Magistratus eorum defensionem suscipere debet ’, Locorum theologicorum, §.

politico. It is therefore in this case not so much a matter of religion, but rather of status

publicus, wherein also religion is comprehended.""(

IV

The efforts of Sweden to legitimize her intervention entailed a careful selection

of the principles of justice to which the legitimation was to appeal. We have

seen that Sweden’s choice from within the available theories of just war was

determinedly conservative. Although the circumstances of the intervention

were in several ways coherent with the humanist account of just war, the

Swedish leaders still preferred to bring their public legitimation into ac-

cordance with the more restrictive tradition of theologians. This was one of the

factors which eventually forced them to give up their wish to present the

intervention as genuine war, and to construct the argument of ‘police-action’

against the violators of the public order for the sake of the German Protestant

Estates and their own security.

In , the Swedish political elites believed that the just war doctrine of the

Catholic and Protestant theologians was a valid norm for the behaviour of

states. The central argument of the humanists that prudence can sometimes

make law was not yet widely acknowledged. Of course their principles, mainly

through the mediation of reason-of-state literature, may have been applied to

practical politics. But the crucial point is that utilitas and ius, even if conflated

in some theories, were not conflated in the minds of these politicians.

""( Quoted from Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, , p. . Cf. Parker, ed., The Thirty Years’ War,

p. .