The book (which was begun last summer) has been written during the spare hours of “a very full schedule” and without the noble aid, inspiration and encouragement of the author’s wife it could not have been finished for another season. The author also desires to thank the many scholars and others, here and abroad, who, in reviews and private letters, have encouraged the labor through favorable criticism of the earlier book. If this little volume is accorded the same reception by critics and readers as the large work, the labor in writing it has been well worth while. THE AUTHOR. _Philadelphia, April, 1913._ [Illustration: Gustavus Adolphus. From a painting at Skokloster. (H.)] PART I. Introduction. Sweden Immediately Preceding and During the Occupation of the Delaware. CHAPTER I. POLITICAL, SOCIAL, RELIGIOUS AND OTHER CONDITIONS IN SWEDEN, 1611–1660. I. The beginning of the seventeenth century marks a new era in Swedish history. The constructive statesmanship of the great Vasa (whose fruits were wasted by forty years of misrule) lived again in the famous Carl IX and in his more famous son, and during their reigns Sweden took first place among the powers of northern Europe. The first sixty years of the century was an epoch of war. When Gustavus Adolphus ascended the Swedish throne in 1611, the armies of his country were engaged against three nations, Denmark, Russia and Poland. The King was anxious to conclude peace with Denmark, but this was refused and hostilities continued. The enemy, however, had the advantage and was able to impose hard terms in 1613, when the two belligerents were finally tired of the useless and bitter warfare. The King could now send more troops to the aid of his generals in Russia, and in the summers of 1614 and 1615 he went in person to lead the operations there. In February, 1617, the Russian war also came to an end by the treaty of Stolbova, where peace negotiations had been in progress for nearly a year and a half. Through this treaty Sweden acquired the territories of Ingermanland and Kexholm; and Gustavus Adolphus won two of his foremost objects,--Russia was pushed back from the Baltic, and a natural northern boundary for Finland was secured against the Cossack hordes.