Charles XI, however, has left an impressive arsenal in place for his son, should he wish to take up the sword and Charles XII has an obsessive interest in soldiering.Īs the new century dawns, Sweden is a strong, aggressive state, surrounded by jealous rivals from whom she has taken territory in the last hundred years. Neither of these commodities are available in abundance, and prudent stewardship has been necessary too. This military power did, however, cost money and Swedish lives. The nation emerged from that conflict immeasurably stronger in military terms, and able to invade its Baltic neighbours at will. Even though he died in battle at Luetzen in 1632, the army that he created helped Sweden profit from the seemingly endless religious struggles of the Thirty Years War. The whole ship is given over to a rocket battery and the necessary stores.Sweden dominates Scandinavia and the Baltic, a Northern European empire that is the legacy of the incomparable warrior-king, Gustavus II Adolphus. This, then, is the fundamental aim of Britain: to side with the weak in Europe against the strong – and steal as many overseas possessions as possible while doing it!Ī rocket ship is a floating arsenal, usually converted from a two-masted ketch-rigged vessel. A nation that can unite the resources of Europe will surely crush the dream of Albion. They are partly right, but only as long as there is no centralised Continental power. The English and Scots like to think that they can sleep safe, that no foreign invader or tyranny need worry them. With Dutchman William III on the British throne, there is ambivalence in the traditional rivalry with the Netherlands! The English Channel keeps the French at bay and, to a lesser extent, the Dutch. Trade taxes pay for the navy the navy allows unhindered trade. Despite – or perhaps because of – this turbulent history, Britain is an engine driving the scientific and cultural advancement of northern Europe: turmoil fuels creativity.Īs an island nation, Britons have always looked to, as Shakespeare puts it:īritain’s strength lies at sea, but in trade and colonisation as much as naval power.
Nonetheless, the exiled James Stuart has sympathisers, the Jacobites, throughout Britain. A short, vicious war in Ireland put paid to any chance of a Catholic Stuart restoration. Less than 15 years ago, the hated Catholic James II was forced into exile in the Glorious Revolution and a Protestant monarchy restored. The new nation has been through a century of unparalleled turbulence: an unwelcome joining of Scotland and England religious strife civil wars an executed king military dictatorship a populist monarch restored and the overthrow of a second king. Great Britain is not a natural creation, but the marriage of separate kingdoms and peoples.
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