Military history of Sweden
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Prehistoric Sweden and the Viking ages
During prehistoric times, Sweden was divided into three kingdoms; Svea, Göta and Vende. There were many wars fought between these kingdoms and eventually the Svea won. The Icelandic sagas tell of many family feuds as well, one can assume that these were common in Sweden also, as the structure of society was similar.
During the early Middle Ages, many Vikings took recruitment in the fleet and participated both in trade and in plundering raids. The system of Leidang was used to organize the armies in the different parts of the country. In an alliance with the Danes, the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung won the war against the Norwegians at the battle of Svolder.
Middle Ages
The
The Early Vasa era
Swedish War of Liberation
The
The De la Gardie Campaign
The De la Gardie Campaign refers to the actions of a 15,000-strong military unit commanded by
The combined Russo-Swedish forces set out from
In June 1610, De la Gardie and Dmitry Shuisky departed from Moscow in order to lift Żółkiewski's
The Ingrian War
The Ingrian War between
The Kalmar War
The Kalmar War was a war between Sweden and Denmark 1611 to 1613. Sweden sought an alternative trade route to avoid paying Denmark's Sound Toll through Northern Norway. This was not to Denmark's liking and they invaded southern Sweden. England and the Netherlands were also invested in the Baltic Sea trade, and pressured to curtail Denmark's power by ending the Kalmar War before a decisive victory could be attained. The Danes, while well-equipped and strong, had relied heavily on mercenary forces and Christian IV, low on funds, was finally amenable to persuasion in 1613. With England's intercession, the Treaty of Knäred was signed on 20 January 1613.
Denmark reached its victory, restoring Norwegian control of Sweden's land route through Lapland by incorporating Sápmi Lapland into Norway (and thus under Danish rule). Further, Sweden had to pay a high ransom for two fortresses captured by Denmark. Sweden, however, achieved a major concession — the right of free trade through the Sound Strait, becoming exempt of the Sound toll (a right shared by England and Holland).
Polish–Swedish Wars
The
The Swedish Empire era
The Thirty Years' War
The
Sweden held, for a time, control of the principal trade routes of the Baltic; and the increment of revenue resulting from this commanding position was of material assistance during the earlier stages of the war in Germany, whither the Swedish king
Rivers, and acquired three voices in the Council of Princes of the German Reichstag.The Torstenson War
The Torstenson war was a short period of conflict between
Dutch-Swedish War
The
Charles X's wars
Sweden attacked Poland in 1655. The goal was to gain full control over the Baltic Sea. During the two first years, Swedish troops occupied large parts of Poland and the war was almost won. In 1656, Sweden won the battle of Warsaw, but the Polish resistance hardened and the farmers began fighting a guerrilla war against the Swedes.
The war did not go well, and in the autumn of 1657, Denmark-Norway declared war against Sweden. Charles X took then the army and marched north. In October, the Swedes conquered Frederiksodde and on 30 January the Swedish army crossed the
Wanting to follow up his victory, Charles X attacked Copenhagen in 1659, but was forced to withdraw because of the strong Danish defence and support from the Dutch navy. Norwegian forces succeeded in reconquering the province of Trondheim. The 1660 Treaty of Copenhagen restored Trondheim to Norway and Bornholm to Denmark.
The Scanian War
The Scanian War was fought between the union of Denmark–Norway and Sweden from 1675–1679. The war was prompted by the Swedish involvement in the Franco-Dutch War. Sweden had allied with France against several European countries. The United Provinces, under attack by France, sought support from Denmark-Norway.
The Danish objective was to retrieve the Scanian lands that had been given to Sweden after the Northern Wars. Although the Danish offensive was initially a great success, Swedish counter-offensives nullified much of the gain. The most important battle was fought at Battle of Lund were Swedish forces won a costly victory, this was a turningpoint in the war for Sweden. Eventually, a French-dictated peace was negotiated stipulating that all territory lost by Sweden be returned.
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War took place between 1700 and 1721. It was fought between a coalition of Russia, Denmark–Norway, and Saxony (also the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1701, and Prussia and Hanover from 1715) and Sweden, which was helped by the Ottoman Empire and monetary subsidized by France.
The war began as a coordinated attack on Sweden, ruled by the young
The Age of Liberty
Hats and Caps
The policy of the Hats was a return to the traditional alliance between France and Sweden. When Sweden descended to a position of a second-rate power the French - alliance became too costly a luxury. Horn had clearly perceived this; and his cautious neutrality was therefore the soundest statesmanship. But the politicians who had ousted Horn thought differently. To them prosperity without glory was a worthless possession. They aimed at restoring Sweden to her former position as a great power. France, naturally, hailed with satisfaction the rise of a faction which was content to be her armourbearer in the north; and the golden streams which flowed from Versailles to Stockholm during the next two generations were the political life-blood of the Hat party.
The first blunder of the Hats was the
The first blow was not struck until six months after the declaration of war; and it was struck by the enemy, who routed the Swedes at Lappeenranta and captured that frontier fortress. Nothing else was done on either side for six months more; and then the Swedish generals made a "tacit truce" with the Russians through the mediation of the French ambassador at St. Petersburg. By the time that the "tacit truce" had come to an end the Swedish forces were so demoralized that the mere rumour of a hostile attack made them retire panic-stricken to Helsinki; and before the end of the year all Finland was in the hands of the Russians. The fleet, disabled by an epidemic, was, throughout the war, little more than a floating hospital.
To face the
The Pomeranian War
King Adolf Frederick of Sweden (1751–1771) would have given even less trouble than his predecessor but for the ambitious promptings of his masterful consort Louisa Ulrika, Frederick the Great's sister, and the tyranny of the estates, who seemed bent upon driving the meekest of princes into rebellion. An attempted monarchical revolution, planned by the queen and a few devoted young nobles in 1756, was easily and remorselessly crushed; and, though the unhappy king did not, as he anticipated, share the fate of Charles Stuart, he was humiliated as never monarch was humiliated before.
The same years which beheld this great domestic triumph of the Hats saw also the utter collapse of their foreign "system." At the instigation of France they plunged recklessly into the Seven Years' War; and the result was ruinous. The French subsidies, which might have sufficed for a six weeks demonstration (it was generally assumed that the king of Prussia would give little trouble to a European coalition), proved quite inadequate; and, after five unsuccessful campaigns, the unhappy Hats were glad to make peace and ignominiously withdraw from a little war which had cost the country 40,000 men. When the Riksdag met in 1760, the indignation against the Hat leaders was so violent that an impeachment seemed inevitable; but once more the superiority of their parliamentary tactics prevailed, and when, after a session of twenty months, the Riksdag was brought to a close by the mutual consent of both the exhausted factions, the Hat government was bolstered up for another four years. But the day of reckoning could not be postponed forever; and when the estates met in 1765 it brought the Caps into power at last. Their leader, Ture Rudbeck, was elected marshal of the Diet over Frederick Axel von Fersen, the Hat candidate, by a large majority; and, out of the hundred seats in the secret committee, the Hats succeeded in getting only ten.
The Caps struck at once at the weak point of their opponents by ordering a budget report to be made; and it was speedily found that the whole financial system of the Hats had been based upon reckless improvidence and the wilful misrepresentation, and that the only fruit of their long rule was an enormous addition to the national debt and a depreciation of the note circulation to one third of its face value. This revelation led to an all-round retrenchment, carried into effect with a drastic thoroughness which has earned for this parliament the name of the "Reduction Riksdag". The Caps succeeded in reducing the national debt, half of which was transferred from the pockets of the rich to the empty exchequer, and establishing some sort of equilibrium between revenue and expenditure. They also introduced a few useful reforms, the most remarkable of which was the
Although no longer a great power, she still had many of the responsibilities of a great power; and if the Swedish alliance had considerably depreciated in value, it was still a marketable commodity. Sweden's particular geographical position made her virtually invulnerable for six months out of the twelve, her Pomeranian possessions afforded her an easy ingress into the very heart of the moribund empire, while her Finnish frontier was not many leagues from the Russian capital.
A watchful neutrality, not venturing much beyond defensive alliances and commercial treaties with the maritime powers, was therefore Sweden's safest policy, and this the older Caps had always followed out. But when the Hats became the armourbearers of France in the north, a protector strong enough to counteract French influence became the cardinal exigency of their opponents, the younger Caps, who now flung themselves into the arms of Russia, overlooking the fact that even a pacific union with Russia was more to be feared than a martial alliance with France. For France was too distant to be dangerous. She sought an ally in Sweden and it was her endeavour to make that ally as strong as possible. But it was as a future prey, not as a possible ally, that Russia regarded her ancient rival in the north. In the treaty which partitioned Poland there was a secret clause which engaged the contracting powers to uphold the existing Swedish constitution as the swiftest means of subverting Swedish independence; and an alliance with the credulous Caps, "the Patriots" as they were called at St. Petersburg, guaranteeing their constitution, was the corollary to this secret understanding. Thus, while the French alliance of the warlike Hats had destroyed the prestige of Sweden, the Russian alliance of the peaceful Caps threatened to destroy her very existence.
Fortunately, the domination of the Caps was not for long. The general distress occasioned by their drastic reforms had found expression in swarms of pamphlets which bit and stung the Cap government, under the protection of the new press laws. The
On the eve of the contest there was a general assembly of the Hats at the French embassy, where the Comte de Modêne furnished them with 6,000,000 livres, but not until they had signed in his presence an undertaking to reform the constitution in a monarchical sense. Still more energetic on the other side, the Russian minister, Andrey Osterman, became the treasurer as well as the counsellor of the Caps, and scattered the largesse of the Russian empress with a lavish hand; and so lost to all feeling of patriotism were the Caps that they openly threatened all who ventured to vote against them with the Muscovite vengeance, and fixed Norrköping, instead of Stockholm, as the place of meeting for the Riksdag as being more accessible to the Russian fleet. But it soon became evident that the Caps were playing a losing game; and, when the Riksdag met at Norrköping on 19 April, they found themselves in a minority in all four estates. In the contest for speaker of the Riksdag (Lantmarskalk) the leaders of the two parties were again pitted against each other, when the verdict of the last Diet was exactly reversed, von Fersen defeating Rudbeck by 234, though Russia spent no less a sum than 90,000 Riksdaler to secure the election of the latter.
The Caps had short shrift, and the joint note which the Russian,
Gustavian times
Gustav III's Russian War
The Russo-Swedish War of 1788–90, known as Gustav III's Russian War in Sweden and as Catherine II's Swedish War in Russia, was fought between Sweden and Russia from June 1788 to August 1790.
The conflict was initiated by King
The Swedes initially planned a naval assault on St. Petersburg. One Swedish army was to advance through Finland; a second army, accompanied by the Swedish coastal flotilla, was to advance along the Finnish coast into the Gulf of Finland; while a third army sailed with the Swedish battlefleet in order to land at Oranienbaum to advance on St. Petersburg.
The Russian battlefleet under Samuel Greig met the Swedish fleet off Hogland Island in the Gulf of Finland on 17 July 1788, at the Battle of Hogland. The battle was tactically indecisive, but the Russians did enough to prevent the Swedish landing. As the war was deeply unpopular in Sweden and the Finnish officers were mutinous, news of the failure at Hogland triggered a revolt among some of the noble army officers, known as the League of Anjala.
The Swedish attack on Russia caused
At sea, the two evenly matched battlefleets met again at the Battle of Öland on 25 July 1789, which was indecisive. A month later, on 24 August, the Russian Vice-Admiral Nassau-Siegen decisively defeated the Swedish coastal flotilla at the First Battle of Svensksund.
In 1790, King Gustav revived the plan for a landing close to St. Petersburg, this time near Vyborg. But the plan foundered in a disastrous attack on the Russian fleet at the Battle of Reval on 13 May. A further attack on the Russian fleet off Kronstadt at the beginning of June also failed and the Swedish battlefleet and galley flotilla both retired to Vyborg Bay, where the combined Swedish fleets of some 400 vessels were blockaded by Vasily Chichagov's Baltic Fleet for a month. On 3 July the Swedes forced their way out in the costly Battle of Vyborg Bay, losing six battleships and four frigates as a result.
The Swedish battlefleet retired to Sveaborg for repairs while the Swedish galley flotilla made for a strong defensive position at Svenskrund. An impetuous Russian attack on the Swedish galley flotilla on 9 July at the
The Russo-Swedish War of 1788–1790 was, overall, mostly insignificant for the parties involved. Catherine II regarded the war against her Swedish cousin as a minor distraction, as her land troops were tied in the war against Turkey and she was likewise concerned with revolutionary events unfolding in Poland and in France. The war solved Gustav III's domestic problems only briefly, as he was assassinated at the Opera in Stockholm, in 1792.
The Finnish War
The Finnish War was fought between
The Union era
The Napoleonic Wars
The
The Battle of Bornhöved
The Battle of Bornhöved was a battle between Sweden and Denmark on 7 December 1813 in Bornhöved in northern Germany. The Swedes were victorious and this was a first step in conquering Norway. This would be realized in the Treaty of Kiel of 1814.
War with Norway
According to the Treaty of Kiel, the king of Denmark–Norway ceded Norway to the king of Sweden. However, Norwegian resistance led to the restoration of Norwegian independence in 1814. Trying to enforce the provisions of the Kiel treaty, Sweden invaded Norway in July 1814. After two weeks, the superior strength of the Swedish army had forced the Norwegians to conclude the Convention of Moss on 14 August 1814. Norway kept its new constitution and formal independence, but had to accept a personal union with Sweden.
The peace with Norway at Moss concluded the last Swedish war.
World War I
Sweden was officially neutral during World War I, although, under German pressure, they did take steps which were detrimental to the Allied powers including mining the Öresund channel, thus closing it to Allied shipping.[2] Sweden also provided volunteers fighting for the White Guards together with the Germans against the Reds and Russians in the Finnish Civil War.
World War II
Swedish neutrality – national policy since the end of the Napoleonic Wars – was maintained during World War II.
Cold War
Sweden kept the non-alignment policy as well as the conscription-based army. The
Congo Crisis
During the Congo Crisis (1960–65) the U.N. Fighter Wing was formed and the Swedish F 22 Kongo was part of it. The Swedes flew Saab 29 Tunnan fighters against the rebel forces of Katanga.
Post Cold War
During the 1990s, the armed forces budget was cut and several regiments were closed down. Several regiment towns have protested against downsizing, and the government has tried to prevent rising unemployment by relocating state agencies to these towns.
The number of enlisted recruits has decreased. The recruits are encouraged to sign up for additional service after their mandatory training is over. The units formed by those who chose to continue their service can be used as rapid response units in international missions, and are also targets of recruiting to the
Since the ending of the cold war, and despite a continuing position of neutrality, Sweden has been slowly playing an increased role in international operations, including NATO operations in Kosovo (KFOR) and Afghanistan (the International Security Assistance Force).
As of February 2020, Swedish soldiers are present in the following regions:
- Afghanistan
- Central African Republic
- Hungary
- Korea
- Kosovo
- Mali
- Middle East
- Pakistan
- Somalia
- Western Sahara
- Yemen
Sweden has registered about 15 units in the rapid response unit catalogs of the
Sweden is the framework nation for the Nordic Battlegroup, one of the EU Battlegroups that was active during the first half of 2008. This was also repeated during 2011. Sweden had command of the battlegroup for the third time in 2015, when it was placed in standby during the period of 1 January - 30 June.[3]
In 2010 Sweden deactivated conscription, only to activate it again in 2017. During the same time, the conscription was made gender-neutral, meaning that both women and men are since called up for obligatory military service .[4]
Sweden and NATO
After Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 Sweden made the national defence the priority of the military once again. The full Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 also made Sweden together with Finland apply for NATO membership.[5] Several regements were re-open and the military defence budget will double from 2020 to 2024.[6]
On March 7, 2024, Sweden became NATO's 32nd member soon after Hungary deposited its instrument of ratification.
See also
- Rise of Sweden as a Great Power
- List of Swedish wars
- Category:Wars involving Sweden
- Swedish Armed Forces
References
- ^ Barton, Dunbar Plunkett. (1925) Bernadotte Prince and King. Pp. 34-111. John Murray, London.
- ^ Siney, Marion C. (1975). "Swedish neutrality and economic warfare in World War I". Conspectus of History. 1 (2).
- ^ Swedish armed forces: http://www.forsvarsmakten.se/en/archived-pages/about/our-mission-in-sweden-and-abroad/international-activities-and-operations/nordic-battle-group/ Archived 2017-03-13 at the Wayback Machine
- ISSN 0961-2025.
- ^ https://www.government.se/government-policy/sweden-and-nato/
- ^ https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2023/09/stor-satsning-pa-militart-forsvar-och-natomal-beraknas-vara-uppfyllt/