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Therefore, in 1648, against Oxenstierna, against her generals, and against her people, she exercised her royal power and brought the Thirty Years' War to an end by the so-called Peace of Westphalia. At this time she was twenty-two, and by her personal influence she had ended one of the greatest struggles of history. Nor had she done it to her country's loss.
The more basely the Brethren were deserted by men, the more certain he was that they would be defended by God. He wrote to Oxenstierna on the subject. "If there is no help from man," he said, "there will be from God, whose aid is wont to commence when that of man ceases."
Holstein, Schleswig and Jutland were speedily in Torstensson's hands, but the Danish fleet was superior to the Swedish, and he could make no further progress. Both sides turned to the United Provinces. Christian promised that the grievances in regard to the Sound dues should be removed if the States-General would remain neutral. Oxenstierna addressed himself to Louis de Geer.
The diplomatists went to work, and in true diplomatic fashion. Two years they spent in formalities and haggling, while Germany was swarming with disbanded lansquenets. It was then that old Oxenstierna said to his son, who had modestly declined an ambassadorship on the ground of inexperience, "Thou knowest not, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed."
This treaty was made with the concurrence and strong approval of the Swedish Chancellor, Oxenstierna, and was probably decisive in its effect upon the final issue of the Thirty Years' War. In the early spring of 1635, therefore, a French force entered the Netherlands and, after defeating Prince Thomas of Savoy at Namur, joined the Dutch army at Maestricht.
Thus step by step English progress encroached upon the territories of the Dutch. In 1638 Van Twiller was recalled and William Kieft was sent over. He had to deal with Swedes as well as English, for in 1626 King Gustavus Adolphus was persuaded by Usselinx, an Amsterdam merchant, to form the Swedish West India Company, and after his death Oxenstierna, his prime-minister, renewed the scheme.
The death of Gustavus made no difference to the position of Louis de Geer in Sweden, for he found Axel Oxenstierna a warm friend and powerful supporter. Among other fresh enterprises was the formation of a Swedo-Dutch Company for trading on the West Coast of Africa. In this company Oxenstierna himself invested money.
Therefore, in 1648, against Oxenstierna, against her generals, and against her people, she exercised her royal power and brought the Thirty Years' War to an end by the so-called Peace of Westphalia. At this time she was twenty-two, and by her personal influence she had ended one of the greatest struggles of history. Nor had she done it to her country's loss.
So the man, who was known to have been the actual writer of the Advocate's Justification, continued to live in straitened circumstances at Paris, until Oxenstierna appointed him Swedish ambassador at the French court. This post he held for eleven years. Of his extraordinary ability, and of the variety and range of his knowledge, it is not possible to speak without seeming exaggeration.
As the Swedish historian Fryxell truly says, "all that was won by the statesmanship of Oxenstierna, by the sword of Baner, Torstensson and Wrangel, in a desolated Germany streaming with blood, has been already lost again; but the benefits which Louis de Geer brought to Sweden, by the path of peaceful industry and virtue, these still exist, and bear wholesome fruit to a late posterity."
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