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"Online access to Sveriges Krig, 1611-1632?" Topic


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Charge The Guns27 Apr 2019 9:37 a.m. PST

Hello TMP,

I am starting to research the battles between Sweden and Poland during Gustav Adolf II's reign. It seems as though there are some nice looking maps in the 8 volume Sveriges Krig, 1611-1632. Does anyone know of an online version available?

Thanks.

hornblaeser28 Apr 2019 1:11 a.m. PST

link
searcher here.
there are also flag drawings, uniforms etc.

Daniel S28 Apr 2019 1:25 a.m. PST

Tha link only covers the original period maps held by the Swedish war archive, the lable "Sveriges Krig" does not refer to the historical study by that name that Charge the Guns askes about but is rather the name of a particular collection held by the Swedish War Archive which contains maps related to all wars fought by Sweden. Most of those maps are original period maps drawn up by Swedish military engineers and are often of very mudane stuff such as encampments. Some maps and drawings are also later copies of now lost originals or even attempts by 18th Century artists to translate written documents into an image.

Charge The Guns28 Apr 2019 2:27 a.m. PST

Thank you Hornblaesr. A very useful link. I am sure I will find many interesting things there (Very kind of a Swedish site to have an English language option!)

As Daniel S mentions, I am trying to find if there is an online version of a (8 volume?) book, published in 1936 which appears to be the Swedish General Staff's history of the 1611-32 conflicts in which Sweden was involved.

Although I can't read Swedish, there appear to be some excellent maps in this text. For example, here is one of the Battle of Mewe/Gniew in 1626 that I found on a site.

picture

There are several other maps I have seen online that appear to be from the same text. I'm therefore hoping that there is a way to access the text online so that I can look through all of the battles 1626-29.

I am guessing that, as Daniel S has not posted a link, there probably isn't a free online copy?

Daniel S29 Apr 2019 11:32 a.m. PST

No, the work is still in copyright and while you can find some of the maps online no one has made all of them available. (Not to mention that the text is 5000 pages…)

Maps from SK are a bit complicated, basically they are not as good as they look and this particularly applies to the maps of the Polish battles. In general, the terrain is recreated very accurately using a combination of 'modern' maps (i.e maps available 1920-1936), older maps as close to the period as possible and on-site surveys of the battlefields conducted by officers and nco's from the historical department of the Swedish general staff. However, when all of this raw data from different time periods were to be combined into a map by the map maker errors did creep in due to mistakes or him misunderstanding the source material.

The Mewe/Gniew map is a good example, on it you see a road running along the Vistula, through Grünhof and then down to Mewe. The problem is that this road did not exist in 1626, it is a misinterpretation because a modern map caused a misunderstanding of the 1626 originals drawn by the Swedish army engineers. For most of the distance the "road" is actually a wall/embankment built along the river to prevent floods. In 1626 it was a very important terrain feature as it provided the Swedes with a ready-made earthwork which not only housed the Swedish encampment but also provided vital protection from the Polish cavalry as Gustavus made moves to breakthrough to Mewe.

Another example is the map of the fighting at Dirschau in 1627, there the map maker made use of a map from 1628 which showed the Swedish camp and entrenchments link but did not understand that the dotted lines showed only planned expansions from 1628 which did not exist in 1627. (We have written accounts confirming this) So the final map shows Swedish cavalry crossing a ditch and wall entrenchment repeatedly which makes no sense. In reality they were using the open space between the small square sconces.
The troops positions and movements are often flawed in the maps for the Polish War, they are not well connected with the text and often hard to reconcile with the historical sources.

Volume 2 of SK which covers the Polish war was heavily edited before it was published to cram the history of 1621-1629 into a single volume to save costs and free up space for the German war. I have studied the original research notes and chapter drafts in the Swedish War Archive and the final product have suffered in quality due to the editing. Large amounts of text were removed and replaced with a shorter version in a way that left a lot of flaws. At times actions are ascribed to the wrong unit or events get lost as the text starts to describe an event but never finishes doing so. (Essentially the initial part of event "A" is described, then the text jumps to describe other events but never jumps back to finish describing event "A".)

And there is the bias towards Swedish sources compounded by the fact that not enough Polish sources were used and certain unfavourable events were toned down to sweep them under the rug a bit or the description is so short that unpleasant details get left out even though the text acknowledges a set back or defeat.

The maps are not useless by any means but one needs to more or less forget the events they show and focus on the written sources. (And probably check the original sources just to make sure.)

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