Thirty Years War:
Quote:
The Swedish Period
Gustavus II (Gustavus Adolphus) of Sweden now came into the war. His territorial ambitions had embroiled him in wars with Poland, and he feared that Ferdinand's maritime designs might threaten Sweden's mastery of the Baltic. Moved also by his Protestantism, he declared against the emperor and was supported by an understanding with Catholic France, then under the leadership of Cardinal Richelieu. Swedish troops marched into Germany. Meanwhile, Ferdinand had been prevailed upon (1630) to dismiss Wallenstein, who had powerful enemies in the empire. Tilly now headed the imperial forces. He was able to take the city of Magdeburg while the Protestant princes hesitated to join the Swedes. Only John George of Saxony, vacillating in his support between Tilly and the Swedish king, joined Gustavus Adolphus, who offered him better terms.
The combined forces crushed Tilly at Breitenfeld (1631), thus winning N Germany. Gustavus Adolphus triumphantly advanced and Tilly was defeated and fatally wounded in the battle of the Lech (1632). Wallenstein, recalled with some pleading by the emperor, took the field. He defeated the Saxon forces and later met the Swedish forces at Lützen (Nov., 1632); there the imperialists were defeated, but Gustavus Adolphus was killed and the anti-Hapsburg troops were disorganized. Wallenstein after his great defeat remained inactive and entered into long negotiations with the enemy. Meanwhile, the able anti-imperialist general, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, stormed Regensburg (1633).
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Infoplease
I have ancestors who settled in
Ulvila at the order of the then King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus. At the time it had long been a Finnish village but was renamed – believed to be after St Olaf, a saint who was quite big in Norway and and across the nordic region – and Finland’s second oldest [mediaeval] church established there by the 14th century, although there had been an earlier church from year 1200’s. What these settlers had in common was that they had been ennobled by Gustavus Adolphus for the victory in the Thirty Years War 1618 – 1648, with Monkhoven having come from a Belgian noble family – buried at Antwerp Cathedral – and Von Grothusen from Latvia then known as Livonia, a Baltic German noble line, together with Mikael Von Jordan, supposedly another Baltic German, who originated from Pomerania or Silesia, but some historians believe was actually 100% Finnish, all knighted and rewarded with substantial areas of land in the Ulvila region. Von Jordan married Monkhoven’s daughter, and his third eldest son, Magnus, married the granddaughter of Von Grothusen whose other parent was a Swedish noble, Engelbrekt Eneskjöld. The eldest son,
Carl von Jordan, was disowned and executed by beheading for bigamy (the only execution for bigamy ever in Finland), having married a lady in Bremen, which was then Swedish-owned, and at the same time marrying a noblewoman in Finland, whilst the second son behaved in a manner unbecoming and was cut out of the will. I can imagine, having won a religious war in which the Protestants were victorious, affirming Sweden as a sovereign nation, with Von Jordan having been some kind of war chaplain who led his troops in prayer before each battle, and wanting two of his sons to enter into the clergy, there was a strong puritanical pious whiff about him. The pair had fourteen children in all, some dying in infancy. Now they lived at a truly beautiful spot at
Villelä, Nakkila, and the fabulous manor house is still standing, albeit now privately owned by a company. Likewise, the Von Grothusen
kartano (=manor house) is now a school but can still be seen at
Lyttylä, on a promontory, also near Pori. Pori is a more modern city, which came about as land rose out of the sea and it was considered a more suitable harbour. Ulvila/Nakkila is quite far inland now by about 10 kilometres.
The big surprise however, was to come later.
Having had a historian in the family who meticulously researched my grandmother’s side of the family (as her own father was my grandmother’s brother), I knew they had been in the same rural region for at least ten generations, and their
kartanos are still there, I looked further into my grandmother’s line as they obviously could not all have come from the same place. Having researched as many lines as possible – helped by the fact Finland has a meticulous local history of most areas, and easily obtainable from the library – I discovered they were concentrated in four main areas…all within fifty kilometres of each other, to form a neat square around the rich fertile belt of southwest Finland. In other words, for up to thirteen generations and beyond, my grandmother’s ancestors never moved very far away at all, yet consanguinity seemed rare, with one or two great grandparents married to someone who shared their third great grandparent. So the outliers at Ulvila, 150 kilometres away to the west, near Pori, were the aberration, and I can thank the Thirty Years War for that. The others were just ordinary Finnish farmers, albeit formerly Free Estates until
Charles X's Great Reduction, when suddenly taxes had to be paid to support all the wars and having toured the area recently, I doubt the landscape has changed much over the past four hundred years. The same farmsteads and extensive fields. There was one ancient family name that I found cropping up in the library books, which was new to me: ‘
Kulta’. Imagine my shock to walk into Kuusjoki church yard (Kuusjoki population: <1,800) to be confronted with row upon row of gravestones bearing the name…’Kulta’. The other knock out was to chance upon the presumed site of the mythical [but officially listed as a Finnish antiquity site]
Kaupinlinna, by accident, which was an added bonus.
So, how did the Thirty Years War affect you, culturally, historically or geographically?
