Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Breitenfeld, by Johann Jakob Walter
Gustavus Adolphus at Breitenfeld, September 1631, painted within living memory of the battle. The linear formations behind him are the point: the Swedish army fought in shallower, more mobile units than the deep squares it faced, and the difference was a reform of the state as much as of the drill.
Breitenfeld was the first great Protestant victory of the Thirty Years' War, and it was won by an army that Sweden — a kingdom of well under two million people — should not have been able to field. What made it possible was administrative: a national conscription register, a crown that had taken control of copper and iron revenue, and a chancery under Axel Oxenstierna capable of paying and supplying troops abroad. The tactics in this painting rest on those ledgers. It hangs in the Musée historique de Strasbourg. See how Gustavus Adolphus built modern Sweden.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
