took it to heart. On
the docket of the Supreme Court at Stockholm is a letter written by
Gustav Adolf to the judges and ordered by him to be entered there,
which tells them plainly that if any of them is found perverting
justice to suit him, the King, or any one else, he will have him
flayed alive and his hide nailed to the judgment-seat, his ears
to the pillory! Not a nice way of talking to dignified judges,
perhaps, but then the prescription was intended to suit the
practice, if there was need.

The young king earned his spurs in a war with Denmark that came near
being his last as it was his first campaign. He and his horsemen
were surprised by the Danes on a winter's night as they were warming
themselves by a fire built of the pews in the Wittsjoe church, and
they cut their way through only after a desperate fight on the
frozen lake. The ice broke under the king's horse and he was going
down when two of his men caught him in the nick of time. He got away
with the loss of his sword, his pistols, and his gloves. "I will
remember you with a crust that shall do for your bairns too," he
promised one of his rescuers, a stout peasant lad, and he kept his
word. Thomas Larsson's descendants a generation ago still tilled the
farm the King gave him. When the trouble with Denmark was over for
the time being, he settled old scores with Russia and Poland in a
way that left Sweden mistress of the Baltic. In the Polish war he
was wounded twice and was repeatedly in peril of his life. Once he
was shot in the neck, and, as the bullet could not be removed, it
ever after troubled him to wear armor. His officers pleaded with him
to spare himself, but his reply was that Caesar and Alexander did not
skulk behind the lines; a general must lead if he expected his men
to follow.

In this campaign he met the League's troops, sent to chase him back
to his own so that Wallenstein, the leader of the imperial armies,
might be "General of the Baltic Sea," unmolested. "Go to Poland," he
commanded one of his lieutenants, "and drive the snow-king out; or
else tell him that I shall come and do it myself." The proud soldier
never knew how near he came to entertaining the snow-king as his
unwilling guest then. In a fight between his rear-guard and the
imperial army Gustav Adolf was disarmed and taken prisoner by two
troopers. There was another prisoner who had kept his pistol. He
handed it to the King behind his back and with it he shot one of his
ca