VOLUME XII SLICE VI Groups, Theory of to Gwyniad (continued 11)

It was while hunting near Lake Mälar that the news of the Stockholm massacre was brought to him by a peasant fresh from the capital, who told him, at the same time, that a price had been set upon his head. In his extremity, Gustavus saw only one way of deliverance, an appeal for help to the sturdy yeomen of the dales. How the dalesmen set Gustavus on the throne and how he and they finally drove the Danes out of Sweden (1521-1523) is elsewhere recorded (see Sweden: History). But his worst troubles only began after his coronation on the 6th of June 1523. The financial position of the crown was the most important of all the problems demanding solution, for upon that everything else depended. By releasing his country from the tyranny of Denmark, Gustavus had made the free independent development of Sweden a possibility. It was for him to realize that possibility. First of all, order had to be evolved from the chaos in which Sweden had been plunged by the disruption of the Union; and the shortest, perhaps the only, way thereto was to restore the royal authority, which had been in abeyance during ninety years. But an effective reforming monarchy must stand upon a sound financial basis; and the usual revenues of the crown, always inadequate, were so diminished that they did not cover half the daily expenses of government. New taxes could only be imposed with extreme caution, while the country was still bleeding from the wounds of a long war. And men were wanted even more than money. The lack of capable, trustworthy administrators in Sweden was grievous. The whole burden of government weighed exclusively on the shoulders of the new king, a young man of seven and twenty. Half his time was taken up in travelling from one end of the kingdom to the other, and doing purely clerical work for want of competent assistance. We can form some idea of his difficulties when we learn that, in 1533, he could not send an ambassador to Lübeck because not a single man in his council, except himself, knew German. It was this lack of native talent which compelled Gustavus frequently to employ the services of foreign adventurers like Berent von Mehlen, John von Hoja, Konrad von Pyhy and others.

It was not the least of Gustavus’s many anxieties that he had constantly to be on the watch lest a formidable democratic rival should encroach on his prerogative. That rival was the Swedish peasantry. He succeeded indeed in putting down the four formidable rebellions which convulsed the realm from 1525 to 1542, but the consequent strain upon his resources was very damaging, and more than once he was on the point of abdicating and emigrating, out of sheer weariness. Moreover he was in constant fear of the Danes. Necessity compelled him indeed (1534-1536) to take part in Grevens fejde (Counts’ War) (see Denmark, History), as the ally of Christian III., but his exaggerated distrust of the Danes was invincible. “We advise and exhort you,” he wrote to the governor of Kalmar, “to put no hope or trust in the Danes, or in their sweet scribbling, inasmuch as they mean nothing at all by it except how best they may deceive and betray us Swedes.” Such instructions were not calculated to promote confidence between Swedish and Danish negotiators. A fresh cause of dispute was generated in 1548, when Christian III.’s daughter was wedded to Duke Augustus of Saxony. On that occasion, apparently by way of protest against the decree of the diet of Vesterås (15th of January 1544), declaring the Swedish crown hereditary in Gustavus’s family, the Danish king caused to be quartered on his daughter’s shield not only the three Danish lions and the Norwegian lion with the axe of St Olaf, but also “the three crowns” of Sweden. Gustavus, naturally suspicious, was much perturbed by the innovation, and warned all his border officials to be watchful and prepare for the worst. In 1557 he even wrote to the Danish king protesting against the placing of “the three crowns” in the royal Danish seal beneath the arms of Denmark. Christian III. replied that “the three crowns” signified not Sweden in especial, but the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and that their insertion in the Danish shield was only a reminiscence of the union of Kalmar. But Gustavus was not satisfied, and this was the beginning of “the three crowns” dispute which did so much damage to both kingdoms.

The events which led to the rupture of Gustavus with the Holy See are set forth in the proper place (see Sweden: History). Here it need only be added that it was a purely political act, as Gustavus, personally, had no strong dogmatic leanings either way. He not unnaturally expressed his amazement when that very juvenile reformer Olavus Petri confidently informed him that the pope was antichrist. He consulted the older and graver Laurentius Andreae, who told him how “Doctor Martinus had clipped the wings of the pope, the cardinals and the big bishops,” which could not fail to be pleasing intelligence to a monarch who was never an admirer of episcopacy, while the rich revenues of the church, accumulated in the course of centuries, were a tempting object to the impecunious ruler of an impoverished people. Subsequently, when the Protestant hierarchy was forcibly established in Sweden, matters were much complicated by the absolutist tendencies of Gustavus. The incessant labour, the constant anxiety, which were the daily portion of Gustavus Vasa during the seven and thirty years of his reign, told at last even upon his magnificent constitution. In the spring of 1560, conscious of an ominous decline of his powers, Gustavus summoned his last diet, to give an account of his stewardship. On the 16th of June 1560 the assembly met at Stockholm. Ten days later, supported by his sons, Gustavus greeted the estates in the great hall of the palace, when he took a retrospect of his reign, reminding them of the misery of the kingdom during the union and its deliverance from “that unkind tyrant, King Christian.” Four days later the diet passed a resolution confirming the hereditary right of Gustavus’s son, Prince Eric, to the throne. The old king’s last anxieties were now over and he could die in peace. He expired on the 29th of September 1560.

Gustavus was thrice married. His first wife, Catherine, daughter of Magnus I., duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, bore him in 1533 his eldest son Eric. This union was neither long nor happy, but the blame for its infelicity is generally attributed to the lady, whose abnormal character was reflected and accentuated in her unhappy son. Much more fortunate was Gustavus’s second marriage, a year after the death of his first consort, with his own countrywoman, Margaret Lejonhufvud, who bore him five sons and five daughters, of whom three sons, John, Magnus and Charles, and one daughter, Cecilia, survived their childhood. Queen Margaret died in 1551; and a twelvemonth later Gustavus wedded her niece, Catharine Stenbock, a handsome girl of sixteen, who survived him more than sixty years.

Gustavus’s outward appearance in the prime of life is thus described by a contemporary: “He was of the middle height, with a round head, light yellow hair, a fine long beard, sharp eyes, a ruddy countenance ... and a body as fitly and well proportioned as any painter could have painted it. He was of a sanguine-choleric temperament, and when untroubled and unvexed, a bright and cheerful gentleman, easy to get on with, and however many people happened to be in the same room with him, he was never at a loss for an answer to every one of them.” Learned he was not, but he had naturally bright and clear understanding, an unusually good memory, and a marvellous capacity for taking pains. He was also very devout, and his morals were irreproachable. On the other hand, Gustavus had his full share of the family failings of irritability and suspiciousness, the latter quality becoming almost morbid under the pressure of adverse circumstances. His energy too not infrequently degenerated into violence, and when crossed he was apt to be tyrannical.

See A. Alberg, Gustavus Vasa and his Times (London, 1882); R. N. Bain, Scandinavia, chaps. iii. and v. (Cambridge, 1905); P. B. Watson, The Swedish Revolution under Gustavus Vasa (London, 1889); O. Sjögren, Gustaf Vasa (Stockholm, 1896); C. M. Butler, The Reformation in Sweden (New York, 1883); Sveriges Historia (Stockholm, 1877-1881); J. Weidling, Schwedische Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Gotha, 1882).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS II. ADOLPHUS (1594-1632), king of Sweden, the eldest son of Charles IX. and of Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein-Gottorp, was born at Stockholm castle on the 9th of December 1594. From the first he was carefully nurtured to be the future prop of Protestantism by his austere parents. Gustavus was well grounded in the classics, and his linguistic accomplishments were extraordinary. He may be said to have grown up with two mother-tongues, Swedish and German; at twelve he had mastered Latin, Italian and Dutch; and he learnt subsequently to express himself in Spanish, Russian and Polish. But his practical father took care that he should grow up a prince, not a pedant. So early as his ninth year he was introduced to public life; at thirteen he received petitions and conversed officially with the foreign ministers; at fifteen he administered his duchy of Vestmanland and opened the Örebro diet with a speech from the throne; indeed from 1610 he may be regarded as his father’s co-regent. In all martial and chivalrous accomplishments he was already an adept; and when, a year later, he succeeded to supreme power, his superior ability was as uncontested as it was incontestable.

The first act of the young king was to terminate the fratricidal struggle with Denmark by the peace of Knäred (28th of January 1613). Simultaneously, another war, also an heritage from Charles IX., had been proceeding in the far distant regions round lakes Ilmen, Peipus and Ladoga, with Great Novgorod as its centre. It was not, however, like the Danish War, a national danger, but a political speculation meant to be remunerative and compensatory, and was concluded very advantageously for Sweden by the peace of Stolbova on the 27th of February 1617 (see Sweden: History). By this peace Gustavus succeeded in excluding Muscovy from the Baltic. “I hope to God,” he declared to the Stockholm diet in 1617, when he announced the conclusion of peace, “that the Russians will feel it a bit difficult to skip over that little brook.” The war with Poland which Gustavus resumed in 1621 was a much more difficult affair. It began with an attack upon Riga as the first step towards conquering Livonia. Riga was invested on the 13th of August and surrendered on the 15th of September; on the 3rd of October Mitau was occupied; but so great were the ravages of sickness during the campaign that the Swedish army had to be reinforced by no fewer than 10,000 men. A truce was thereupon concluded and hostilities were suspended till the summer of 1625, in the course of which Gustavus took Kokenhusen and invaded Lithuania. In January 1626 he attacked the Poles at Walhof and scattered the whole of their army after slaying a fifth part of it. This victory, remarkable besides as Gustavus’s first pitched battle, completed the conquest of Livonia. As, however, it became every year more difficult to support an army in the Dvina district, Gustavus now resolved to transfer the war to the Prussian provinces of Poland with a view to securing the control of the Vistula, as he had already secured the control of the Dvina. At the end of 1626, the Swedish fleet, with 14,000 men on board, anchored in front of the chain of sand-dunes which separates the Frische-Haff from the Baltic. Pillau, the only Baltic port then accessible to ships of war, was at once occupied, and Königsberg shortly afterwards was scared into an unconditional neutrality. July was passed in conquering the bishopric of Ermeland. The surrender of Elbing and Marienburg placed Gustavus in possession of the fertile and easily defensible delta of the Vistula, which he treated as a permanent conquest, making Axel Oxenstjerna its first governor-general. Communications between Danzig and the sea were cut off by the erection of the first of Gustavus’s famous entrenched camps at Dirschau. From the end of August 1626 the city was blockaded, and in the meantime Polish irregulars, under the capable Stanislaus Koniecpolski, began to harass the Swedes. But the object of the campaign, a convenient basis of operations, was won; and in October the king departed to Sweden to get reinforcements. He returned in May 1627 with 7000 men, which raised his forces to 14,000, against which Koniecpolski could only oppose 9000. But his superior strategy frustrated all the efforts of the Swedish king, who in the course of the year was twice dangerously wounded and so disabled that he could never wear armour again. Gustavus had made extensive preparations for the ensuing campaign and took the field with 32,000 men. But once again, though far outnumbered, and unsupported by his own government, the Polish grand-hetman proved more than a match for Gustavus, who, on the 10th of September, broke up his camp and returned to Prussia; the whole autumn campaign had proved a failure and cost him 5000 men. During the ensuing campaign of 1629 Gustavus had to contend against the combined forces of Koniecpolski and 10,000 of Wallenstein’s mercenaries. The Polish commander now showed the Swedes what he could do with adequate forces. At Stuhm, on the 29th of June, he defeated Gustavus, who lost most of his artillery and narrowly escaped capture. The result of the campaign was the conclusion of the six years’ truce of Altmark, which was very advantageous to Sweden.

And now Gustavus turned his attention to Germany. The motives which induced the Swedish king to intervene directly in the Thirty Years’ War are told us by himself in his correspondence with Oxenstjerna. Here he says plainly that it was the fear lest the emperor should acquire the Baltic ports and proceed to build up a sea-power dangerous to Scandinavia. For the same reason, the king rejected the chancellor’s alternative of waging a simply defensive war against the emperor by means of the fleet, with Stralsund as his base. He was convinced by the experience of Christian IV. of Denmark that the enemies’ harbours could be wrested from them only by a successful offensive war on land; and, while quite alive to the risks of such an enterprise in the face of two large armies, Tilly’s and Wallenstein’s, each of them larger than his own, he argued that the vast extent of territory and the numerous garrisons which the enemy was obliged to maintain, more than neutralized his numerical superiority. Merely to blockade all the German ports with the Swedish fleet was equally impossible. The Swedish fleet was too weak for that; it would be safer to take and fortify the pick of them. In Germany itself, if he once got the upper hand, he would not find himself without resources. It is no enthusiastic crusader, but an anxious and farseeing if somewhat speculative statesman who thus opens his mind to us. No doubt religious considerations largely influenced Gustavus. He had the deepest sympathy for his fellow-Protestants in Germany; he regarded them as God’s peculiar people, himself as their divinely appointed deliverer. But his first duty was to Sweden; and, naturally and rightly, he viewed the whole business from a predominantly Swedish point of view. Lutherans and Calvinists were to be delivered from a “soul-crushing tyranny”; but they were to be delivered by a foreign if friendly power; and that power claimed as her reward the hegemony of Protestant Europe and all the political privileges belonging to that exalted position.

On the 19th of May 1630 Gustavus solemnly took leave of the estates of the realm assembled at Stockholm. He appeared before them holding in his arms his only child and heiress, the little princess Christina, then in her fourth year, and tenderly committed her to the care of his loyal and devoted people. Then he solemnly took the estates to witness, as he stood there “in the sight of the Almighty,” that he had begun hostilities “out of no lust for war, as many will certainly devise and imagine,” but in self-defence and to deliver his fellow-Christians from oppression. On the 7th of June 1630 the Swedish fleet set sail, and two days after midsummer day, the whole army, 16,000 strong, was disembarked at Peenemünde. Gustavus’s plan was to take possession of the mouths of the Oder Haff, and, resting upon Stralsund in the west and Prussia in the east, penetrate into Germany. In those days rivers were what railways now are, the great military routes; and Gustavus’s German war was a war waged along river lines. The opening campaign was to be fought along the line of the Oder. Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, and the key of the Oder line, was occupied and converted into a first-class fortress. He then proceeded to clear Pomerania of the piebald imperial host composed of every nationality under heaven, and officered by Italians, Irishmen, Czechs, Croats, Danes, Spaniards and Walloons. Gustavus’s army has often been described by German historians as an army of foreign invaders; in reality it was far more truly Teutonic than the official defenders of Germany at that period. Gustavus’s political difficulties (see Sweden: History) chained him to his camp for the remainder of the year. But the dismissal of Wallenstein and the declaration in Gustavus’s favour of Magdeburg, the greatest city in the Lower Saxon Circle, and strategically the strongest fortress of North Germany, encouraged him to advance boldly. But first, honour as well as expediency moved him to attempt to relieve Magdeburg, now closely invested by the imperialists, especially as his hands had now been considerably strengthened by a definite alliance with France (treaty of Bärwalde, 13th of January 1631). Magdeburg, therefore, became the focus of the whole campaign of 1631; but the obstructive timidity of the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony threw insuperable obstacles in his way, and, on the very day when John George I. of Saxony closed his gates against Gustavus the most populous and prosperous city in North Germany became a heap of smoking ruins (20th of May). Gustavus, still too weak to meet the foe, entrenched himself at Werben, at the confluence of the Havel and Elbe. Only on the 12th of September did the elector of Saxony, alarmed for the safety of his own states, now invaded by the emperor, place himself absolutely at the disposal of Gustavus; and, five days later, at the head of the combined Swedish-Saxon army, though the Swedes did all the fighting, Gustavus routed Tilly at the famous battle of Breitenfeld, north of Leipzig.

The question now was: In what way should Gustavus utilize his advantage? Should he invade the Austrian crown lands, and dictate peace to Ferdinand II. at the gates of Vienna? Or should he pursue Tilly westwards and crush the league at its own hearth and home? Oxenstjerna was the first alternative, but Gustavus decided in favour of the second. His decision has been greatly blamed. More than one modern historian has argued that if Gustavus had done in 1631 what Napoleon did in 1805 and 1809, there would have been a fifteen instead of a thirty years’ war. But it should be borne in mind that, in the days of Gustavus, Vienna was by no means so essential to the existence of the Habsburg monarchy as it was in the days of Napoleon; and even Gustavus could not allow so dangerous an opponent as Tilly time to recover himself. Accordingly, he set out for the Rhine, taking Marienberg and Frankfort on his way, and on the 20th of December entered Mainz, where he remained throughout the winter of 1631-1632. At the beginning of 1632, in order to bring about the general peace he so earnestly desired, he proposed to take the field with an overwhelming numerical majority. The signal for Gustavus to break up from the Rhine was the sudden advance of Tilly from behind the Danube. Gustavus pursued Tilly into Bavaria, forced the passage of the Danube at Donauwörth and the passage of the Lech, in the face of Tilly’s strongly entrenched camp at Rain, and pursued the flying foe to the fortress of Ingolstadt where Tilly died of his wounds a fortnight later. Gustavus then liberated and garrisoned the long-oppressed Protestant cities of Augsburg and Ulm, and in May occupied Munich. The same week Wallenstein chased John George from Prague and manœuvred the Saxons out of Bohemia. Then, armed as he was with plenipotentiary power, he offered the elector of Saxony peace on his own terms. Gustavus suddenly saw himself exposed to extreme peril. If Tilly had made John George such an offer as Wallenstein was now empowered to make, the elector would never have become Gustavus’s ally; would he remain Gustavus’s ally now? Hastily quitting his quarters in Upper Swabia, Gustavus hastened towards Nuremberg on his way to Saxony, but finding that Wallenstein and Maximilian of Bavaria had united their forces, he abandoned the attempt to reach Saxony, and both armies confronted each other at Nuremberg which furnished Gustavus with a point of support of the first order. He quickly converted the town into an entrenched and fortified camp. Wallenstein followed the king’s example, and entrenched himself on the western bank of the Regnitz in a camp twelve English miles in circumference. His object was to pin Gustavus fast to Nuremberg and cut off his retreat northwards. Throughout July and August the two armies faced each other immovably. On the 24th of August, after an unsuccessful attempt to storm Alte Veste, the key of Wallenstein’s position, the Swedish host retired southwards.

Towards the end of October, Wallenstein, after devastating Saxony, was preparing to go into winter quarters at Lützen, when the king surprised him as he was crossing the Rippach (1st of November) and a rearguard action favourable to the Swedes ensued. Indeed, but for nightfall, Wallenstein’s scattered forces might have been routed. During the night, however, Wallenstein re-collected his host for a decisive action, and at daybreak on the 6th of November, while an autumn mist still lay over the field, the battle began. It was obviously Gustavus’s plan to drive Wallenstein away from the Leipzig road, north of which he had posted himself, and thus, in case of success, to isolate, and subsequently, with the aid of the Saxons in the Elbe fortresses, annihilate him. The king, on the Swedish right wing, succeeded in driving the enemy from the trenches and capturing his cannon. What happened after that is mere conjecture, for a thick mist now obscured the autumn sun, and the battle became a colossal mêlée the details of which are indistinguishable. It was in the midst of that awful obscurity that Gustavus met his death—how or where is not absolutely certain; but it would seem that he lost his way in the darkness while leading the Småland horse to the assistance of his infantry, and was despatched as he lay severely wounded on the ground by a hostile horseman.

By his wife, Marie Eleonora, a sister of the elector of Brandenburg, whom he married in 1620, Gustavus Adolphus had one daughter, Christina, who succeeded him on the throne of Sweden.

See Sveriges Historia (Stockholm, 1877, 81), vol. iv.; A. Oxenstjerna, Skrifter och Brefvexling (Stockholm, 1900, &c.); G. Björlen, Gustaf Adolf (Stockholm, 1890); R. N. Bain, Scandinavia (Cambridge, 1905); C. R. L. Fletcher, Gustavus Adolphus (London, 1892); J. L. Stevens, History of Gustavus Adolphus (London, 1885); J. Mankell, Om Gustaf II. Adolfs politik (Stockholm, 1881); E. Bluemel, Gustav Adolf, König von Schweden (Eisleben, 1894); A. Rydfors, De diplomatiska förbindelserna mellan Sverige och England 1624-1630 (Upsala, 1890).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS III. (1746-1792), king of Sweden, was the eldest son of Adolphus Frederick, king of Sweden, and Louisa Ulrica of Prussia, sister of Frederick the Great, and was born on the 24th of January 1746. Gustavus was educated under the care of two governors who were amongst the most eminent Swedish statesmen of the day, Carl Gustaf Tessin and Carl Scheffer; but he owed most perhaps to the poet and historian Olof von Dalin. The interference of the state with his education, when he was quite a child, was, however, doubly harmful, as his parents taught him to despise the preceptors imposed upon him by the diet, and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation. But even his most hostile teachers were amazed by the brilliance of his natural gifts, and, while still a boy, he possessed that charm of manner which was to make him so fascinating and so dangerous in later life, coupled with the strong dramatic instinct which won for him his honourable place in Swedish literature. On the whole, Gustavus cannot be said to have been well educated, but he read very widely; there was scarce a French author of his day with whose works he was not intimately acquainted; while his enthusiasm for the new French ideas of enlightenment was as sincere as, if more critical than, his mother’s. On the 4th of November 1766, Gustavus married Sophia Magdalena, daughter of Frederick V. of Denmark. The match was an unhappy one, owing partly to incompatibility of temper, but still more to the mischievous interference of the jealous queen-mother.

Gustavus first intervened actively in politics in 1768, at the time of his father’s interregnum, when he compelled the dominant Cap faction to summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in a monarchical direction. But the victorious Hats refused to redeem the pledges which they had given before the elections. “That we should have lost the constitutional battle does not distress us so much,” wrote Gustavus, in the bitterness of his heart; “but what does dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its own felicity in absolute anarchy.” From the 4th of February to the 25th of March 1771, Gustavus was at Paris, where he carried both the court and the city by storm. The poets and the philosophers paid him enthusiastic homage, and all the distinguished women of the day testified to his superlative merits. With many of them he maintained a lifelong correspondence. But his visit to the French capital was no mere pleasure trip; it was also a political mission. Confidential agents from the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the duc de Choiseul, weary of Swedish anarchy, had resolved to discuss with him the best method of bringing about a revolution in Sweden. Before he departed, the French government undertook to pay the outstanding subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half million livres annually; and the comte de Vergennes, one of the great names of French diplomacy, was transferred from Constantinople to Stockholm. On his way home Gustavus paid a short visit to his uncle, Frederick the Great, at Potsdam. Frederick bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he had guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution, and significantly advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.

On his return to Sweden Gustavus made a sincere and earnest attempt to mediate between the Hats and Caps who were ruining the country between them (see Sweden: History). On the 21st of June 1771 he opened his first parliament in a speech which awakened strange and deep emotions in all who heard it. It was the first time for more than a century that a Swedish king had addressed a Swedish diet from the throne in its native tongue. The orator laid especial stress on the necessity of the sacrifice of all party animosities to the common weal, and volunteered, as “the first citizen of a free people,” to be the mediator between the contending factions. A composition committee was actually formed, but it proved illusory from the first, the patriotism of neither of the factions being equal to the puniest act of self-denial. The subsequent attempts of the dominant Caps still further to limit the prerogative, and reduce Gustavus to the condition of a roi fainéant, induced him at last to consider the possibility of a revolution. Of its necessity there could be no doubt. Under the sway of the Cap faction, Sweden, already the vassal, could not fail to become the prey of Russia. She was on the point of being absorbed in that northern system, the invention of the Russian vice-chancellor, Count Nikita Panin, which that patient statesman had made it the ambition of his life to realize. Only a swift and sudden coup d’état could save the independence of a country isolated from the rest of Europe by a hostile league. At this juncture Gustavus was approached by Jakob Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish nobleman of determined character, who had incurred the enmity of the Caps, with the project of a revolution. He undertook to seize the fortress of Sveaborg by a coup de main, and, Finland once secured, Sprengtporten proposed to embark for Sweden, meet the king and his friends near Stockholm, and surprise the capital by a night attack, when the estates were to be forced, at the point of the bayonet, to accept a new constitution from the untrammelled king. The plotters were at this juncture reinforced by an ex-ranger from Scania (Skåne), Johan Kristoffer Toll, also a victim of Cap oppression. Toll proposed that a second revolt should break out in the province of Scania, to confuse the government still more, and undertook personally to secure the southern fortress of Kristianstad. After some debate, it was finally arranged that, a few days after the Finnish revolt had begun, Kristianstad should openly declare against the government. Prince Charles, the eldest of the king’s brothers, was thereupon hastily to mobilize the garrisons of all the southern fortresses, for the ostensible purpose of crushing the revolt at Kristianstad; but on arriving before the fortress he was to make common cause with the rebels, and march upon the capital from the south, while Sprengtporten attacked it simultaneously from the east. On the 6th of August 1772 Toll succeeded, by sheer bluff, in winning the fortress of Kristianstad. On the 16th Sprengtporten succeeded in surprising Sveaborg. But contrary winds prevented him from crossing to Stockholm, and in the meanwhile events had occurred which made his presence there unnecessary.

On the 16th of August the Cap leader, Ture Rudbeck, arrived at Stockholm with the news of the insurrection in the south, and Gustavus found himself isolated in the midst of enemies. Sprengtporten lay weather-bound in Finland, Toll was five hundred miles away, the Hat leaders were in hiding. Gustavus thereupon resolved to strike the decisive blow without waiting for the arrival of Sprengtporten. He acted with military promptitude. On the evening of the 18th all the officers whom he thought he could trust received secret instructions to assemble in the great square facing the arsenal on the following morning. At ten o’clock on the 19th Gustavus mounted his horse and rode straight to the arsenal. On the way his adherents joined him in little groups, as if by accident, so that by the time he reached his destination he had about two hundred officers in his suite. After parade he reconducted them to the guard-room of the palace and unfolded his plans to them. He then dictated a new oath of allegiance, and every one signed it without hesitation. It absolved them from their allegiance to the estates, and bound them solely to obey their lawful king, Gustavus III. Meanwhile the senate and the governor-general, Rudbeck, had been arrested and the fleet secured. Then Gustavus made a tour of the city and was everywhere received by enthusiastic crowds, who hailed him as a deliverer. On the evening of the 20th heralds perambulated the streets proclaiming that the estates were to meet in the Rikssaal on the following day; every deputy absenting himself would be regarded as the enemy of his country and his king. On the 21st, a few moments after the estates had assembled, the king in full regalia appeared, and taking his seat on the throne, delivered that famous philippic, one of the masterpieces of Swedish oratory, in which he reproached the estates for their unpatriotic venality and licence in the past. A new constitution was recited by the estates and accepted by them unanimously. The diet was then dissolved.

Gustavus was inspired by a burning enthusiasm for the greatness and welfare of Sweden, and worked in the same reformatory direction as the other contemporary sovereigns of the “age of enlightenment.” He took an active part in every department of business, but relied far more on extra-official counsellors of his own choosing than upon the senate. The effort to remedy the frightful corruption which had been fostered by the Hats and Caps engaged a considerable share of his time and he even found it necessary to put the whole of a supreme court of justice (Göta Hofrätt) on its trial. Measures were also taken to reform the administration and the whole course of judicial procedure, and torture as an instrument of legal investigation was abolished. In 1774 an ordinance providing for the liberty of the press was even issued. The national defences were at the same time developed on a “Great Power” scale, and the navy was so enlarged as to become one of the most formidable in Europe. The dilapidated finances were set in good order by the “currency realization ordinance” of 1777. Gustavus also introduced new national economic principles. In 1775 free trade in corn was promoted and a number of oppressive export-tolls were abolished. The poor law was also amended, absolute religious liberty was proclaimed, and he even succeeded in inventing and popularizing a national costume which was in general use from 1778 till his death. His one great economic blunder was the attempt to make the sale of spirits a government monopoly, which was an obvious infringement upon the privileges of the estates. His foreign policy, on the other hand, was at first both wise and wary. Thus, when the king summoned the estates to assemble at Stockholm on the 3rd of September 1778, he could give a brilliant account of his six years’ stewardship. Never was a parliament more obsequious or a king more gracious. “There was no room for a single No during the whole session.” Yet, short as the session was, it was quite long enough to open the eyes of the deputies to the fact that their political supremacy had departed. They had changed places with the king. He was now indeed their sovereign lord; and, for all his gentleness, the jealousy with which he guarded, the vigour with which he enforced the prerogative, plainly showed that he meant to remain so. Even the few who were patriotic enough to acquiesce in the change by no means liked it. The diet of 1778 had been obsequious; the diet of 1786 was mutinous. The consequence was that nearly all the royal propositions were either rejected outright or so modified that Gustavus himself withdrew them.

The diet of 1786 marks a turning-point in Gustavus’s history. Henceforth we observe a determination on his part to rule without a parliament; a passage, cautious and gradual, yet unflinching, from semi-constitutionalism to semi-absolutism. His opportunity came in 1788, when the political complications arising out of his war with Catherine II. of Russia enabled him by the Act of Unity and Security (on the 17th of February 1789) to override the opposition of the rebellious and grossly unpatriotic gentry, and, with the approbation of the three lower estates, establish a new and revolutionary constitution, in which, though the estates still held the power of the purse, the royal authority largely predominated. Throughout 1789 and 1790 Gustavus, in the national interests, gallantly conducted the unequal struggle with Russia, finally winning in the Svensksund (9th-10th July) the most glorious naval victory ever gained by the Swedish arms, the Russians losing one-third of their fleet and 7000 men. A month later, on the 14th of August 1790, peace was signed between Russia and Sweden at Värälä. Only eight months before, Catherine had haughtily declared that “the odious and revolting aggression” of the king of Sweden would be “forgiven” only if he “testified his repentance” by agreeing to a peace granting a general and unlimited amnesty to all his rebels, and consenting to a guarantee by the Swedish diet (“as it would be imprudent to confide in his good faith alone”) for the observance of peace in the future. The peace of Värälä saved Sweden from any such humiliating concession, and in October 1791 Gustavus took the bold but by no means imprudent step of concluding an eight years’ defensive alliance with the empress, who thereby bound herself to pay her new ally annual subsidies amounting to 300,000 roubles.

Gustavus now aimed at forming a league of princes against the Jacobins, and every other consideration was subordinated thereto. His profound knowledge of popular assemblies enabled him, alone among contemporary sovereigns, accurately to gauge from the first the scope and bearing of the French Revolution. But he was hampered by poverty and the jealousy of the other European Powers, and, after showing once more his unrivalled mastery over masses of men at the brief Gefle diet (22nd of January-24th of February 1792), he fell a victim to a widespread aristocratic conspiracy. Shot in the back by Anckarström at a midnight masquerade at the Stockholm opera-house, on the 16th of March 1792, he expired on the 29th.

Although he may be charged with many foibles and extravagances, Gustavus III. was indisputably one of the greatest sovereigns of the 18th century. Unfortunately his genius never had full scope, and his opportunity came too late. Gustavus was, moreover, a most distinguished author. He may be said to have created the Swedish theatre, and some of the best acting dramas in the literature are by his hand. His historical essays, notably the famous anonymous eulogy on Torstenson crowned by the Academy, are full of feeling and exquisite in style,—his letters to his friends are delightful. Every branch of literature and art interested him, every poet and artist of his day found in him a most liberal and sympathetic protector.

See R. N. Bain, Gustavus III. and his Contemporaries (London, 1904); E. G. Geijer, Konung Gustaf III.’s efterlemnade papper (Upsala, 1843-1845); C. T. Odhner, Sveriges politiska historia under Konung Gustaf III.’s regering (Stockholm, 1885-1896); B. von Beskow, Om Gustaf III. såsom Konung och människa (Stockholm, 1860-1861); O. Levertin, Gustaf III. som dramatisk författare (Stockholm, 1894); Gustaf III.’s bref till G. M. Armfelt (Fr.) (Stockholm, 1883); Y. K. Grot, Catharine II. and Gustavus III. (Russ.) (St Petersburg, 1884).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS IV. (1778-1837), king of Sweden, the son of Gustavus III. and Queen Sophia Magdalena, was born at Stockholm on the 1st of November 1778. Carefully educated under the direction of Nils von Rosenstein, he grew up serious and conscientious. In August 1796 his uncle the regent Charles, duke of Sudermania, visited St Petersburg for the purpose of arranging a marriage between the young king and Catherine II.’s granddaughter, the grand-duchess Alexandra. The betrothal was actually fixed for the 22nd of September, when the whole arrangement foundered on the obstinate refusal of Gustavus to allow his destined bride liberty of worship according to the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church—a rebuff which undoubtedly accelerated the death of the Russian empress. Nobody seems to have even suspected at the time that serious mental derangement lay at the root of Gustavus’s abnormal piety. On the contrary, there were many who prematurely congratulated themselves on the fact that Sweden had now no disturbing genius, but an economical, God-fearing, commonplace monarch to deal with. Gustavus’s prompt dismissal of the generally detested Gustaf Reuterholm added still further to his popularity. On the 31st of October 1797 Gustavus married Frederica Dorothea, daughter of Charles Frederick, grand-duke of Baden, a marriage which might have led to a war with Russia but for the fanatical hatred of the French republic shared by the emperor Paul and Gustavus IV., which served as a bond of union between them. Indeed the king’s horror of Jacobinism was morbid in its intensity, and drove him to adopt all sorts of reactionary measures and to postpone his coronation for some years, so as to avoid calling together a diet; but the disorder of the finances, caused partly by the continental war and partly by the almost total failure of the crops in 1798 and 1799, compelled him to summon the estates to Norrköping in March 1800, and on the 3rd of April Gustavus was crowned. The notable change which now took place in Sweden’s foreign policy and its fatal consequences to the country are elsewhere set forth (see Sweden, History). By the end of 1808 it was obvious to every thinking Swede that the king was insane. His violence had alienated his most faithful supporters, while his obstinate incompetence paralysed the national efforts. To remove a madman by force was the one remaining expedient; and this was successfully accomplished by a conspiracy of officers of the western army, headed by Adlersparre, the Anckarsvärds, and Adlercreutz, who marched rapidly from Skåne to Stockholm. On the 13th of March 1809 seven of the conspirators broke into the royal apartments in the palace unannounced, seized the king, and conducted him to the château of Gripsholm; Duke Charles was easily persuaded to accept the leadership of a provisional government, which was proclaimed the same day; and a diet, hastily summoned, solemnly approved of the revolution. On the 29th of March Gustavus, in order to save the crown for his son, voluntarily abdicated; but on the 10th of May the estates, dominated by the army, declared that not merely Gustavus but his whole family had forfeited the throne. On the 5th of June the duke regent was proclaimed king under the title of Charles XIII., after accepting the new liberal constitution, which was ratified by the diet the same day. In December Gustavus and his family were transported to Germany. Gustavus now assumed the title of count of Gottorp, but subsequently called himself Colonel Gustafsson, under which pseudonym he wrote most of his works. He led, separated from his family, an erratic life for some years; was divorced from his consort in 1812; and finally settled at St Gall in Switzerland in great loneliness and indigence. He died on the 7th of February 1837, and, at the suggestion of King Oscar II. his body was brought to Sweden and interred in the Riddarholmskyrka. From him descend both the Baden and the Oldenburg princely houses on the female side.

See H. G. Trolle-Wachtmeister, Anteckningar och minnen (Stockholm, 1889); B. von Beskow, Lefnadsminnen (Stockholm, 1870); K. V. Key-Åberg, De diplomatiska förbindelserna mellan Sverige och Storbrittannien under Gustaf IV.’s Krig emot Napoléon (Upsala, 1890); Colonel Gustafsson, La Journée du treize mars, &c. (St Gall, 1835); Memorial des Obersten Gustafsson (Leipzig, 1829).

(R. N. B.)

GUSTAVUS V. (1858- ), king of Sweden, son of Oscar II., king of Sweden and Norway, and Queen Sophia Wilhelmina, was born at Drottningholm on the 16th of June 1858. He entered the army, and was, like his father, a great traveller. As crown prince he held the title of duke of Wärmland. He married in 1881 Victoria (b. 1862), daughter of Frederick William Louis, grand duke of Baden, and of Louise, princess of Prussia. The duchess of Baden was the granddaughter of Sophia, princess of Sweden, and the marriage of the crown prince thus effected a union between the Bernadotte dynasty and the ancient Swedish royal house of Vasa. During the absence or illness of his father Gustavus repeatedly acted as regent, and was therefore already thoroughly versed in public affairs when he succeeded to the Swedish throne on the 8th of December 1907, the crown of Norway having been separated from that of Sweden in 1905. He took as his motto “With the people for the Fatherland.”

The crown prince, Oscar Frederick William Gustavus Adolphus, duke of Scania (b. 1882), married in 1905 Princess Margaret of Connaught (b. 1882), niece of King Edward VII. A son was born to them at Stockholm on the 22nd of April 1906, and another son in the following year. The king’s two younger sons were William, duke of Sudermania (b. 1884), and Eric, duke of Westmanland (b. 1889).

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS UNION (Gustav-Adolf-Stiftung, Gustav-Adolf-Verein, Evangelischer Verein der Gustav-Adolf-Stiftung), a society formed of members of the Evangelical Protestant churches of Germany, which has for its object the aid of feeble sister churches, especially in Roman Catholic countries. The project of forming such a society was first broached in connexion with the bicentennial celebration of the battle of Lützen on the 6th of November 1832; a proposal to collect funds for a monument to Gustavus Adolphus having been agreed to, it was suggested by Superintendent Grossmann that the best memorial to the great champion of Protestantism would be the formation of a union for propagating his ideas. For some years the society was limited in its area and its operations, being practically confined to Leipzig and Dresden, but at the Reformation festival in 1841 it received a new impulse through the energy and eloquence of Karl Zimmermann (1803-1877), court preacher at Darmstadt, and in 1843 a general meeting was held at Frankfort-on-the-Main, where no fewer than twenty-nine branch associations belonging to all parts of Germany except Bavaria and Austria were represented. The want of a positive creed tended to make many of the stricter Protestant churchmen doubtful of the usefulness of the union, and the stricter Lutherans have always held aloof from it. On the other hand, its negative attitude in relation to Roman Catholicism secured for it the sympathy of the masses. At a general convention held in Berlin in September 1846 a keen dispute arose about the admission of the Königsberg delegate, Julius Rupp (1809-1884), who in 1845 had been deprived for publicly repudiating the Athanasian Creed and became one of the founders of the “Free Congregations”; and at one time it seemed likely that the society would be completely broken up. Amid the political revolutions of the year 1848 the whole movement fell into stagnation; but in 1849 another general convention (the seventh), held at Breslau, showed that, although the society had lost both in membership and income, it was still possessed of considerable vitality. From that date the Gustav-Adolf-Verein has been more definitely “evangelical” in its tone than formerly; and under the direction of Karl Zimmermann it greatly increased both in numbers and in wealth. It has built over 2000 churches and assisted with some two million pounds over 5000 different communities. Apart from its influence in maintaining Protestantism in hostile areas, there can be no doubt that the union has had a great effect in helping the various Protestant churches of Germany to realize the number and importance of their common interests.

See K. Zimmermann, Geschichte des Gustav-Adolf-Vereins (Darmstadt, 1877).

GÜSTROW, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the Nebel and the railway from Lübeck to Stettin, 20 m. S. of Rostock. Pop. (1875), 10,923; (1905) 17,163. The principal buildings are the castle, erected in the middle of the 16th century and now used as a workhouse; the cathedral, dating from the 13th century and restored in 1868, containing many fine monuments and possessing a square tower 100 ft. high; the Pfarrkirche, with fine altar-paintings; the town hall (Rathaus), dating from the 16th century; the music hall, and the theatre. Among the educational establishments are the ducal gymnasium, which possesses a library of 15,000 volumes, a modern and a commercial school. The town is one of the most prosperous in the duchy, and has machine works, foundries, tanneries, sawmills, breweries, distilleries, and manufactories of tobacco, glue, candles and soap. There is also a considerable trade in wool, corn, wood, butter and cattle, and an annual cattle show and horse races are held.

Güstrow, capital of the Mecklenburg duchy of that name, or of the Wend district, was a place of some importance as early as the 12th century, and in 1219 it became the residence of Henry Borwin II., prince of Mecklenburg, from whom it received Schwerin privileges. From 1316 to 1436 the town was the residence of the princes of the Wends, and from 1556 to 1695 of the dukes of Mecklenburg-Güstrow. In 1628 it was occupied by the imperial troops, and Wallenstein resided in it during part of the years 1628 and 1629.

GUTENBERG, JOHANN (c. 1398-1468), German printer, is supposed to have been born c. 1398-1399 at Mainz of well-to-do parents, his father being Friele zum Gensfleisch and his mother Elsgen Wyrich (or, from her birthplace, zu Gutenberg, the name he adopted). He is assumed to be mentioned under the name of “Henchen” in a copy of a document of 1420, and again in a document of c. 1427-1428, but it is not stated where he then resided. On January 16, 1430, his mother arranged with the city of Mainz about an annuity belonging to him; but when, in the same year, some families who had been expelled a few years before were permitted to return to Mainz, Gutenberg appears not to have availed himself of the privilege, as he is described in the act of reconciliation (dated March 28) as “not being in Mainz.” It is therefore assumed that the family had taken refuge in Strassburg, where Gutenberg was residing later. There he is said to have been in 1434, and to have seized and imprisoned the town clerk of Mainz for a debt due to him by the corporation of that city, releasing him, however, at the representations of the mayor and councillors of Strassburg, and relinquishing at the same time all claims to the money (310 Rhenish guilders = about 2400 mark).1 Between 1436 and 1439 certain documents represent him as having been engaged there in some experiments requiring money, with Andreas Dritzehn, a fellow-citizen, who became not only security for him but his partner to carry out Gutenberg’s plan for polishing stones and the manufacture of looking-glasses, for which a lucrative sale was expected at the approaching pilgrimage of 1440 (subsequently postponed, according to the documents, although there is no evidence for this postponement) to Aix-la-Chapelle. Money was lent for this purpose by two other friends. In 1438 another partnership was arranged between Gutenberg, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas and Anton Heilmann, and that this had in view the art of printing has been inferred from the word “drucken” used by one of the witnesses in the law proceedings which soon after followed. An action was brought, after the death of Dritzehn, by his two brothers to force Gutenberg to accept them as partners in their brother’s place, but the decision was in favour of the latter. In 1441 Gutenberg became surety to the St Thomas Chapter at Strassburg for Johann Karle, who borrowed 100 guilders (about £16) from the chapter, and on November 17, 1442, he himself borrowed 80 livres through Martin Brechter (or Brehter) from the same chapter. Of his whereabouts from the 12th of March 1444 (when he paid a tax at Strassburg) to the 17th of October 1448 nothing certain is known. But on the latter date we find him at Mainz, borrowing 150 gold guilders of his kinsman, Arnold Gelthus, against an annual interest of 7½ gold guilders. We do not know whether the interest on this debt has ever been paid, but the debt itself appears never to have been paid off, as the contract of this loan was renewed (vidimused) on August 23, 1503, for other parties. It is supposed that soon afterwards Gutenberg must have been able to show some convincing results of his work, for it appears that about 1450 Johann Fust (q.v.) advanced him 800 guilders to promote it, on no security except that of “tools” still to be made. Fust seems also to have undertaken to advance him 300 guilders a year for expenses, wages, house-rent, parchment, paper, ink, &c., but he does not appear to have ever done so. If at any time they disagreed, Gutenberg was to return the 800 guilders, and the “tools” were to cease to be security. It is not known to what purpose Gutenberg devoted the money advanced to him. In the minutes of the law-suit of 1455 he himself says that he had to make his “tools” with it. But he is presumed to have begun a large folio Latin Bible, and to have printed during its progress some smaller books2 and likewise the Letter of Indulgence (granted on the 12th of April 1451 by Pope Nicholas V. in aid of John II., king of Cyprus, against the Turks), of 31 lines, having the earliest printed date 1454, of which several copies are preserved in various European libraries. A copy of the 1455 issue of the same Indulgence is in the Rylands Library at Manchester (from the Althorp Library).

It is not known whether any books were printed while this partnership between Gutenberg and Fust lasted. Trithemius (Ann. Hirsaug. ii. 421) says they first printed, from wooden blocks, a vocabulary called Catholicon, which cannot have been the Catholicon of Johannes de Janua, a folio of 748 pages in two columns of 66 lines each, printed in 1460, but was perhaps a small glossary now lost.3 The Latin Bible of 42 lines, a folio of 1282 printed pages, in two columns with spaces left for illuminated initials (so called because each column contains 42 lines, and also known as the Mazarin Bible, because the first copy described was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin), was finished before the 15th of August 1456;4 German bibliographers now claim this Bible for Gutenberg, but, according to bibliographical rules, it must be ascribed to Peter Schöffer, perhaps in partnership with Fust. It is in smaller type than the Bible of 36 lines, which latter is called either (a) the Bamberg Bible, because nearly all the known copies were found in the neighbourhood of Bamberg, or (b) Schelhorn’s Bible, because J. G. Schelhorn was the first who described it in 1760, or (c) Pfister’s Bible, because its printing is ascribed to Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, who used the same type for several small German books, the chief of which is Boner’s Edelstein (1461, 4to), 88 leaves, with 85 woodcuts, a book of fables in German rhyme. Some bibliographers believe this 36-line Bible to have been begun, if not entirely printed, by Gutenberg during his partnership with Fust, as its type occurs in the 31-line Letters of Indulgence of 1454, was used for the 27-line Donatus (of 1451?), and, finally, when found in Pfister’s possession in 1461, appears to be old and worn, except the additional letters k, w, z required for German, which are clear and sharp like the types used in the Bible. Again, others profess to prove (Dziatzko, Gutenberg’s früheste Druckerpraxis) that B36 was a reprint of B42.

Gutenberg’s work, whatever it may have been, was not a commercial success, and in 1452 Fust had to come forward with another 800 guilders to prevent a collapse. But some time before November 1455 the latter demanded repayment of his advances (see the Helmasperger Notarial Document of November 6, 1455, in Dziatzko’s Beiträge zur Gutenbergfrage, Berlin, 1889), and took legal proceedings against Gutenberg. We do not know the end of these proceedings, but if Gutenberg had prepared any printing materials it would seem that he was compelled to yield up the whole of them to Fust; that the latter removed them to his own house at Mainz, and there, with the assistance of Peter Schöffer, issued various books until the sack of the city in 1462 by Adolphus II. caused a suspension of printing for three years, to be resumed again in 1465.

We have no Information as to Gutenberg’s activity, and very little of his whereabouts, after his separation from Fust. In a document dated June 21, 1457, he appears as witness on behalf of one of his relatives, which shows that he was then still at Mainz. Entries in the registers of the St Thomas Church at Strassburg make it clear that the annual interest on the money which Gutenberg on the 17th of November 1442 (see above) had borrowed from the chapter of that church was regularly paid till the 11th of November 1457, either by himself or by his surety, Martin Brechter. But the payment due on the latter date appears to have been delayed, as an entry in the register of that year shows that the chapter had incurred expenses in taking steps to have both Gutenberg and Brechter arrested. This time the difficulties seem to have been removed, but on and after the 11th of November 1458 Gutenberg and Brechter remained in default. The chapter made various efforts, all recorded in their registers, to get their money, but in vain. Every year they recorded the arrears with the expenses to which they were put in their efforts to arrest the defaulters, till at last in 1474 (six years after Gutenberg’s death) their names are no longer mentioned.

Meantime Gutenberg appears to have been printing, as we learn from a document dated February 26, 1468, that a syndic of Mainz, Dr Conrad Homery (who had formerly been in the service of the elector Count Diether of Ysenburg), had at one time supplied him, not with money, but with some formes, types, tools, implements and other things belonging to printing, which Gutenberg had left after his death, and which had, and still, belonged to him (Homery); this material had come into the hands of Adolf, the archbishop of Mainz, who handed or sent it back to Homery, the latter undertaking to use it in no other town but Mainz, nor to sell it to any person except a citizen of Mainz, even if a stranger should offer him a higher price for the things. This material has never yet been identified, so that we do not know what types Gutenberg may have had at his disposal; they could hardly have included the types of the Catholicon of 1460, as is suggested, this work being probably executed by Heinrich Bechtermünze (d. 1467), who afterwards removed to Eltville, or perhaps by Peter Schöffer, who, about 1470, advertises the book as his property (see K. Burger, Buchhändler-Anzeigen). It is uncertain whether Gutenberg remained in Mainz or removed to the neighbouring town of Eltville, where he may have been engaged for a while with the brothers Bechtermünze, who printed there for some time with the types of the 1460 Catholicon. On the 17th of January 1465 he accepted the post of salaried courtier from the archbishop Adolf, and in this capacity received annually a suit of livery together with a fixed allowance of corn and wine. Gutenberg seems to have died at Mainz at the beginning of 1468, and was, according to tradition, buried in the Franciscan church in that city. His relative Arnold Gelthus erected a monument to his memory near his supposed grave, and forty years afterwards Ivo Wittig set up a memorial tablet at the legal college at Mainz. No books bearing the name of Gutenberg as printer are known, nor is any genuine portrait of him known, those appearing upon medals, statues or engraved plates being all fictitious.

In 1898 the firm of L. Rosenthal, at Munich, acquired a Missale speciale on paper, which Otto Hupp, in two treatises published in 1898 and 1902, asserts to have been printed by Gutenberg about 1450, seven years before the 1457 Psalter. Various German bibliographers, however, think that it could not have been printed before 1480, and, judging from the facsimiles published by Hupp, this date seems to be approximately correct.

On the 24th of June 1900 the five-hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg’s birth was celebrated in several German cities, notably in Mainz and Leipzig, and most of the recent literature on the invention of printing dates from that time.

So we may note that in 1902 a vellum fragment of an Astronomical Kalendar was discovered by the librarian of Wiesbaden, Dr G. Zedler (Die älteste Gutenbergtype, Mainz, 1902), apparently printed in the 36-line Bible type, and as the position of the sun, moon and other planets described in this document suits the years 1429, 1448 and 1467, he ascribes the printing of this Kalendar to the year 1447. A paper fragment of a poem in German, entitled Weltgericht, said to be printed in the 36-line Bible type, appears to have come into the possession of Herr Eduard Beck at Mainz in 1892, and was presented by him in 1903 to the Gutenberg Museum in that city. Zedler published a facsimile of it in 1904 (for the Gutenberg Gesellschaft), with a description, in which he places it before the 1447 Kalendar, c. 1444-1447. Moreover, fragments of two editions of Donatus different from that of 1451 (?) have recently been found; see Schwenke in Centralbl. für Bibliothekwesen (1908).

The recent literature upon Gutenberg’s life and work and early printing in general includes the following: A. von der Linde, Geschichte und Erdichtung (Stuttgart, 1878); id. Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst (Berlin, 1886); J. H. Hessels, Gutenberg, Was he the Inventor of Printing? (London, 1882); id. Haarlem, the Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz (London, 1886); O. Hartwig, Festschrift zum fünfhundertjährigen Geburtstag von Johann Gutenberg (Leipzig, 1900), which includes various treatises by Schenk zu Schweinsberg, K. Schorbach, &c.; P. Schwenke, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des ersten Buchdrucks (Berlin, 1900); A. Börckel, Gutenberg, sein Leben, &c. (Giessen, 1897); id. Gutenberg und seine berühmten Nachfolger im ersten Jahrhundert der Typographie (Frankfort, 1900); F. Schneider, Mainz und seine Drucker (1900); G. Zedler, Gutenberg-Forschungen (Leipzig, 1901); J. H. Hessels, The so-called Gutenberg Documents (London, 1910). For other works on the subject see Typography.

(J. H. H.)

1 It is difficult to know which of the Gutenberg documents can be trusted and which not. Schorbach, in his recent biography of Gutenberg, accepts and describes 27 of them (Festschrift, 1900, p. 163 sqq.), 17 of which are known only from (not always accurate) copies or transcripts. Under ordinary circumstances history might be based on them. But it is certain that some so-called Gutenberg documents, not included in the above 27, are forgeries. Fr. J. Bodmann (1754-1820), for many years professor and librarian at Mainz, forged at least two; one (dated July 20, 1459) he even provided with four forged seals; the other (dated Strassburg, March 24, 1424) purported to be an autograph letter of Gutenberg to a fictitious sister of his named Bertha. Of these two documents French and German texts were published about 1800-1802; the forger lived for twenty years afterwards but never undeceived the public. He enriched the Gutenberg literature with other fabrications. In fact Bodmann had trained himself for counterfeiting MSS. and documents; he openly boasted of his abilities in this respect, and used them, sometimes to amuse his friends who were searching for Gutenberg documents, sometimes for himself to fill up gaps in Gutenberg’s life. (For two or three more specimens of his capacities see A. Wyss in Zeitschr. für Altert. u. Gesch. Schlesiens, xv. 9 sqq.) To one of his friends (Professor Gotthelf Fischer, who preceded him as librarian of Mainz) one or two other fabrications may be ascribed. There are, moreover, serious misgivings as to documents said to have been discovered about 1740 (when the citizens of Strassburg claimed the honour of the invention for their city) by Jacob Wencker (the then archivist of Strassburg) and J. D. Schoepflin (professor and canon of St Thomas’s at Strassburg). For instance, of the above document of 1434 no original has ever come to light; while the draft of the transaction, alleged to have been written at the time in a register of contracts, and to have been found about 1740 by Wencker, has also disappeared with the register itself. The document (now only known from a copy said to have been taken by Wencker from the draft) is upheld as genuine by Schorbach, who favours an invention of printing at Strassburg, but Bockenheimer, though supporting Gutenberg and Mainz, declares it to be a fiction (Gutenberg-Feier, Mainz, 1900, pp. 24-33). Again, suspicions are justified with respect to the documents recording Gutenberg’s lawsuit of 1439 at Strassburg. Bockenheimer explains at great length (l.c. pp. 41-72) that they are forgeries. He even explains (ibid. pp. 97-107) that the so-called Helmasperger document of November 6, 1455, may be a fabrication of the Faust von Aschaffenburg family, who endeavoured to claim Johann Fust as their ancestor. There are also (1) a fragment of a fictitious “press,” said to have been constructed by Gutenberg in 1441, and to have been discovered (!) at Mainz in 1856; (2) a forged imprint with the date 1458 in a copy of Pope Gregory’s Dialogues, really printed at Strassburg about 1470; (3) a forged rubric in a copy of the Tractatus de celebratione missarum, from which it would appear that Johann Gutenberg and Johann Nummeister had presented it on June 19, 1463, to the Carthusian monastery near Mainz: (4) four forged copies of the Indulgence of 1455, in the Culemann Collection in the Kästner Museum at Hanover, &c. (see further, Hessels, “The so-called Gutenberg Documents,” in The Library, 1909).

2 Among these were perhaps (1) one or two editions of the work of Donatus, De octo partibus orationis, 27 lines to a page, of one of which two leaves, now in the Paris National Library, were discovered at Mainz in the original binding of an account book, one of them having, but in a later hand, the year 1451 (?); (2) the Turk-Kalendar for 1455 (preserved in the Hof-Bibliothek at Munich); (3) the Cisianus (preserved in the Cambridge Univ. Libr.), and perhaps others now lost.

3 Ulric Zell states, in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, that Gutenberg and Fust printed a Bible in large type like that used in missals. It has been said that this description applies to the 42-line Bible, as its type is as large as that of most missals printed before 1500, and that the size now called missal type (double pica) was not used in missals until late in the 16th century. This is no doubt true of the smaller missals printed before 1500, some of which are in even smaller type than the 42-line Bible. But many of the large folio missals, as that printed at Mainz by Peter Schöffer in 1483, the Carthusian missal printed at Spires by Peter Drach about 1490, and the Dominican missal printed by Andrea de Torresanis at Venice in 1496, are in as large type as the 36-line Bible. Peter Schöffer (1425-1502) of Gernsheim, between Mainz and Mannheim, who was a copyist in Paris in 1449, and whom Fust called his servant (famulus), is said by Trithemius to have discovered an easier way of founding characters, whence Lambinet and others concluded that Schöffer invented the punch. Schöffer himself, in the colophon of the Psalter of 1457, a work which some suppose to have been planned and partly printed by Gutenberg, claims only the mode of printing rubrics and coloured capitals.

4 The Leipzig copy of this Bible (which formerly belonged to Herr Klemm of Dresden) has at the end the MS. year 1453 in old Arabic numerals. But certain circumstances connected with this date make it look very suspicious.

GÜTERSLOH, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, 11 m. S.W. from Bielefeld by the railway to Dortmund. Pop. (1905), 7375. It is a seat of silk and cotton industries, and has a large trade in Westphalian hams and sausages. Printing, brewing and distilling are also carried on, and the town is famous for its rye-bread (Pumpernickel). Gütersloh has two Evangelical churches, a Roman Catholic church, a synagogue, a school and other educational establishments.

See Eickhoff, Geschichte der Stadt und Gemeinde Gütersloh (Gütersloh, 1904).

GUTHRIE, SIR JAMES (1859- ), Scottish painter, and one of the leaders of the so-called Glasgow school of painters, was born at Greenock. Though in his youth he was influenced by John Pettie in London, and subsequently studied in Paris, his style, which is remarkable for grasp of character, breadth and spontaneity, is due to the lessons taught him by observation of nature, and to the example of Crawhall, by which he benefited in Lincolnshire in the early ’eighties of the last century. In his early works, such as “The Gipsy Fires are Burning, for Daylight is Past and Gone” (1882), and the “Funeral Service in the Highlands,” he favoured a thick impasto, but with growing experience he used his colour with greater economy and reticence. Subsequently he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture. Sir James Guthrie, like so many of the Glasgow artists, achieved his first successes on the Continent, but soon found recognition in his native country. He was elected associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1888, and full member in 1892, succeeded Sir George Reid as president of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1902, and was knighted in 1903. His painting “Schoolmates” is at the Ghent Gallery. Among his most successful portraits are those of his mother, Mr R. Garroway, Major Hotchkiss, Mrs Fergus, Professor Jack, and Mrs Watson.

GUTHRIE, THOMAS (1803-1873), Scottish divine, was born at Brechin, Forfarshire, on the 12th of July 1803. He entered the university of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve, and continued to attend classes there for more than ten years. On the 2nd of February 1825 the presbytery of Brechin licensed him as a preacher in connexion with the Church of Scotland, and in 1826 he was in Paris studying natural philosophy, chemistry, and comparative anatomy. For two years he acted as manager of his father’s bank, and in 1830 was inducted to his first charge, Arbirlot, in Forfarshire, where he adopted a vivid dramatic style of preaching adapted to his congregation of peasants, farmers and weavers. In 1837 he became the colleague of John Sym in the pastorate of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and at once attracted notice as a great pulpit orator. Towards the close of 1840 he became minister of St John’s church, Victoria Street, Edinburgh. He declined invitations both from London and from India. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the movement which led to the Disruption of 1843; and his name is thenceforth associated with the Free Church, for which he collected £116,000 from July 1845 to June 1846 to provide manses for the seceding ministers. In 1844 he became a teetotaller. In 1847 he began the greatest work of his life by the publication of his first “Plea for Ragged Schools.” This pamphlet elicited a beautiful and sympathetic letter from Lord Jeffrey. A Ragged School was opened on the Castle Hill, which has been the parent of many similar institutions elsewhere, though Guthrie’s relation to the movement is best described as that of an apostle rather than a founder. He insisted on bringing up all the children in his school as Protestants; and he thus made his schools proselytizing as well as educational institutions. This interference with religious liberty led to some controversy; and ultimately those who differed from Guthrie founded the United Industrial School, giving combined secular and separate religious instruction. In April 1847 the degree of D.D. was conferred on Guthrie by the university of Edinburgh; and in 1850 William Hanna (1808-1882), the biographer and son-in-law of Thomas Chalmers, was inducted as his colleague in Free St John’s Church.

In 1850 Guthrie published A Plea on behalf of Drunkards and against Drunkenness, which was followed by The Gospel in Ezekiel (1855); The City: its Sins and Sorrows (1857); Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints (1858); Seedtime and Harvest of Ragged Schools (1860), consisting of his three Pleas for Ragged Schools. These works had an enormous sale, and portions of them were translated into French and Dutch. His advocacy of temperance had much to do with securing the passing of the Forbes Mackenzie Act, which secured Sunday closing and shortened hours of sale for Scotland. Mr Gladstone specially quoted him in support of the Light Wines Bill (1860). In 1862 he was moderator of the Free Church General Assembly; but he seldom took a prominent part in the business of the church courts. His remarkable oratorical talents, rich humour, genuine pathos and inimitable power of story-telling, enabled him to do good service to the total abstinence movement. He was one of the vice-presidents of the Evangelical Alliance. In 1864, his health being seriously impaired, he resigned public work as pastor of Free St John’s (May 17), although his nominal connexion with the congregation ceased only with his death. Guthrie had occasionally contributed papers to Good Words, and, about the time of his retirement from the ministry, he became first editor of the Sunday Magazine, himself contributing several series of papers which were afterwards published separately. In 1865 he was presented with £5000 as a mark of appreciation from the public. His closing years were spent mostly in retirement; and after an illness of several months’ duration he died at St Leonards-on-Sea on the 24th of February 1873.

In addition to the books mentioned above he published a number of books which had a remarkable circulation in England and America, such as Speaking to the Heart (1862); The Way to Life (1862); Man and the Gospel (1865); The Angel’s Song (1865); The Parables (1866); Our Father’s Business (1867); Out of Harness (1867); Early Piety (1868); Studies of Character from the Old Testament (1868-1870); Sundays Abroad (1871).

See Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie, D.D., and Memoir, by his sons (2 vols., London, 1874-1875).

GUTHRIE, THOMAS ANSTEY (1856- ), known by the pseudonym of F. Anstey, English novelist, was born in Kensington, London, on the 8th of August 1856. He was educated at King’s College, London, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1880. But the popular success of his story Vice-Versa (1882) with its topsy-turvy substitution of a father for his schoolboy son, at once made his reputation as a humorist of an original type. He published in 1883 a serious novel, The Giant’s Robe; but, in spite of its excellence, he discovered (and again in 1889 with The Pariah) that it was not as a serious novelist but as a humorist that the public insisted on regarding him. As such his reputation was further confirmed by The Black Poodle (1884), The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886), and other works. He became an important member of the staff of Punch, in which his “Voces populi” and his humorous parodies of a reciter’s stock-piece (“Burglar Bill,” &c.) represent his best work. In 1901 his successful farce The Man from Blankley’s, based on a story which originally appeared in Punch, was first produced at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, in London.

GUTHRIE, the capital of Oklahoma, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Logan county, extending on both sides of Cottonwood creek, and lying one mile south of the Cimarron river. Pop. (1890) 5333, (1900) 10,006, (1907) 11,652 (2871 negroes); (1910) 11,654. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the Fort Smith & Western, and the St Louis, El Reno & Western railways. The city is situated about 940 ft. above the sea, in a prairie region devoted largely to stock-raising and the cultivation of Indian corn, wheat, cotton and various fruits, particularly peaches. Guthrie is one of the headquarters of the Federal courts in the state, the other being Muskogee. The principal public buildings at Guthrie are the state Capitol, the Federal building, the City hall, the Carnegie library, the Methodist hospital and a large Masonic temple. Among the schools are St Joseph’s Academy and a state school for the deaf and dumb. Guthrie has a considerable trade with the surrounding country and has cotton gins, a cotton compress, and foundries and machine shops; among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, cotton goods, flour, cereals, lumber, cigars, brooms and furniture. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,200,662. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks. The city was founded in 1889, when Oklahoma was opened for settlement; in 1890 it was made the capital of the Territory, and in 1907 when Oklahoma was made a state, it became the state capital.

GUTHRUM (Godrum) (d. 890), king of East Anglia, first appears in the English Annals in the year 875, when he is mentioned as one of three Danish kings who went with the host to Cambridge. He was probably engaged in the campaigns of the next three years, and after Alfred’s victory at Edington in 878, Guthrum met the king at Aller in Somersetshire and was baptized there under the name of Æthelstan. He stayed there for twelve days and was greatly honoured by his godfather Alfred. In 890 Guthrum-Æthelstan died: he is then spoken of as “se nor∂erna cyning” (probably) “the Norwegian king,” referring to the ultimate origin of his family, and we are told that he was the first (Scandinavian) to settle East Anglia. Guthrum is perhaps to be identified with Gormr (= Guthrum) hinn heimski or hinn riki of the Scandinavian sagas, the foster-father of Hör∂aknutr, the father of Gorm the old. There is a treaty known as the peace of Alfred and Guthrum.

GUTSCHMID, ALFRED, Baron von (1835-1887), German historian and Orientalist, was born on the 1st of July at Loschwitz (Dresden). After holding chairs at Kiel (1866), Königsberg (1873), and Jena (1876), he was finally appointed professor of history at Tübingen, where he died on the 2nd of March 1887. He devoted himself to the study of Eastern language and history in its pre-Greek and Hellenistic periods and contributed largely to the literature of the subject.

Works.—Über die Fragmente des Pompeius Trogus (supplementary vol. of Jahrbücher für klass. Phil., 1857); Die makedonische Anagraphe (1864); Beiträge zur Gesch. des alten Orients (Leipzig, 1858); Neue Beiträge zur Gesch. des alt. Or., vol. i., Die Assyriologie in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1876); Die Glaubwürdigkeit der armenischen Gesch. des Moses von Khoren (1877); Untersuchungen über die syrische Epitome des eusebischen Canones (1886); Untersuch. über die Gesch. des Königreichs Osraëne (1887); Gesch. Irans (Alexander the Great to the fall of the Arsacidae) (Tübingen, 1887). He wrote on Persia and Phoenicia in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. A collection of minor works entitled Kleine Schriften was published by F. Rühl at Leipzig (1889-1894, 5 vols.), with complete list of his writings. See article by Rühl in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlix. (1904).

GUTS-MUTHS, JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH (1759-1839), German teacher and the principal founder of the German school system of gymnastics, was born at Quedlinburg on the 9th of August 1759. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native town and at Halle University; and in 1785 he went to Schnepfenthal, where he taught geography and gymnastics. His method of teaching gymnastics was expounded by him in various handbooks; and it was chiefly through them that gymnastics very soon came to occupy such an important position in the school system of Germany. He also did much to introduce a better method of instruction in geography. He died on the 21st of May 1839.

His principal works are Gymnastik für die Jugend (1793); Spiele zur Übung und Erholung des Körpers und Geistes für die Jugend (1796); Turnbuch (1817); Handbuch der Geographie (1810); and a number of books constituting a Bibliothek für Pädagogik, Schulwesen, und die gesammte pädagogische Literatur Deutschlands. He also contributed to the Vollständiges Handbuch der neuesten Erdbeschreibung, and along with Jacobi published Deutsches Land und deutsches Volk, the first part, Deutsches Land, being written by him.

GUTTA (Latin for “drop”), an architectural term given to the small frusta of conical or cylindrical form carved below the triglyph and under the regula of the entablature of the Doric Order. They are sometimes known as “trunnels,” a corruption of “tree-nail,” and resemble the wooden pins which in framed timber work or in joinery are employed to fasten together the pieces of wood; these are supposed to be derived from the original timber construction of the Doric temple, in which the pins, driven through the regula, secured the latter to the taenia, and, according to C. Chipiez and F. A. Choisy, passed through the taenia to hold the triglyphs in place. In the earliest examples of the Doric Order at Corinth and Selinus, the guttae are completely isolated from the architrave, and in Temple C. at Selinus the guttae are 3 or 4 in. in front of it, as if to enable the pin to be driven in more easily. In later examples they are partly attached to the architrave. Similar guttae are carved under the mutules of the Doric cornice, representing the pins driven through the mutules to secure the rafters. In the temples at Bassae, Paestum and Selinus, instances have been found where the guttae had been carved separately and sunk into holes cut in the soffit of the mutules and the regula. Their constant employment in the Doric temples suggests that, although originally of constructive origin, they were subsequently employed as decorative features.

GUTTA PERCHA, the name applied to the evaporated milky fluid or latex furnished by several trees chiefly found in the islands of the Malay Archipelago. The name is derived from two Malay words, getah meaning gum, and pertja being the name of the tree—probably a Bassia—from which the gum was (erroneously) supposed to be obtained.

Botanical Origin and Distribution.—The actual tree is known to the Malays as taban, and the product as getah taban. The best gutta percha of Malaya is chiefly derived from two trees, and is known as getah taban merah (red) or getah taban sutra (silky). The trees in question, which belong to the natural order Sapotaceae, have now been definitely identified, the first as Dichopsis gutta (Bentham and Hooker), otherwise Isonandra gutta (Hooker) or Palaquium gutta (Burck), and the second as Dichopsis oblongifolia (Burck). Allied trees of the same genus and of the same natural order yield similar but usually inferior products. Among them may be mentioned species of Payena (getah soondie).

Gutta percha trees often attain a height of 70 to 100 ft. and the trunk has a diameter of from 2 to 3 ft. They are stated to be mature when about thirty years old. The leaves of Dichopsis, which are obovate-lanceolate, with a distinct pointed apex, occur in clusters at the end of the branches, and are bright green and smooth on the upper surface but on the lower surface are yellowish-brown and covered with silky hairs. The leaves are usually about 6 in. long and about 2 in. wide at the centre. The flowers are white, and the seeds are contained in an ovoid berry about 1 in. long.

The geographical distribution of the gutta percha tree is almost entirely confined to the Malay Peninsula and its immediate neighbourhood. It includes a region within 6 degrees north and south of the equator and 93°-119° longitude, where the temperature ranges from 66° to 90° F. and the atmosphere is exceedingly moist. The trees may be grown from seeds or from cuttings. Some planting has taken place in Malaya, but little has so far been done to acclimatize the plant in other regions. Recent information seems to point to the possibility of growing the tree in Ceylon and on the west coast of Africa.

Preparation of Gutta Percha.—The gutta is furnished by the greyish milky fluid known as the latex, which is chiefly secreted in cylindrical vessels or cells situated in the cortex, that is, between the bark and the wood (or cambium). Latex also occurs in the leaves of the tree to the extent of about 9% of the dried leaves, and this may be removed from the powdered leaves by the use of appropriate solvents, but the process is not practicable commercially. The latex flows slowly where an incision is made through the bark, but not nearly so freely, even in the rainy season, as the india-rubber latex. On this account the Malays usually fell the tree in order to collect the latex, which is done by chopping off the branches and removing circles of the bark, forming cylindrical channels about an inch wide at various points about a foot apart down the trunk. The latex exudes and fills these channels, from which it is removed and converted into gutta by boiling in open vessels over wood fires. The work is usually carried on in the wet season when the latex is more fluid and more abundant. Sometimes when the latex is thick water is added to it before boiling.

The best results are said to be obtained from mature trees about thirty years old, which furnish about 2 to 3 ℔ of gutta. Older trees do not appear to yield larger amounts of gutta, whilst younger trees are said to furnish less and of inferior quality. The trees have been so extensively felled for the gutta that there has been a great diminution in the total number during recent years, which has not been compensated for by the new plantations which have been established.

Uses of Gutta Percha.—The Chinese and Malays appear to have been acquainted with the characteristic property of gutta percha of softening in warm water and of regaining its hardness when cold, but this plastic property seems to have been only utilized for ornamental purposes, the construction of walking-sticks and of knife handles and whips, &c.

The brothers Tradescant brought samples of the curious material to Europe about the middle of the 17th century. It was then regarded as a form of wood, to which the name of “mazer” wood was given on account of its employment in making mazers or goblets. A description of it is given in a book published by John Tradescant in 1656 entitled Musaeum Tradescantianum or a Collection of Rarities preserved at South Lambeth near London. Many of the curiosities collected from all parts of the world by the Tradescants subsequently formed the nucleus of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford which was opened in 1683, but the specimen of “mazer wood” no longer exists.

In 1843 samples of the material were sent to London by Dr William Montgomerie of Singapore, and were exhibited at the Society of Arts, and in the same year Dr José d’Almeida sent samples to the Royal Asiatic Society. Gutta percha was also exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Dr Montgomerie’s communication to the Society of Arts led to many experiments being made with the material. Casts of medals were successfully produced, and Sir William Siemens, in conjunction with Werner von Siemens, then made the first experiments with the material as an insulating covering for cable and telegraph wires, which led to the discovery of its important applications in this connexion and to a considerable commercial demand for the substance.

The value of gutta percha depends chiefly on its quality, that is its richness in true gutta and freedom from resin and other impurities which interfere with its physical characters, and especially its insulating power or inability to conduct electricity.

The chief use of gutta percha is now for electrical purposes. Other minor uses are in dentistry and as a means of taking impressions of medals, &c. It has also found application in the preparation of belting for machinery, as well as for the construction of the handles of knives and surgical instruments, whilst the inferior qualities are used for waterproofing.

Commercial Production.—The amount of gutta percha exported through Singapore from British and Dutch possessions in the East is subject to considerable fluctuation, depending chiefly on the demand for cable and telegraph construction. In 1886 the total export from Singapore was 40,411 cwt., of which Great Britain took 31,666 cwt.; in 1896 the export was 51,982 cwt. of which 29,722 cwt. came to Great Britain; while in 1905, 42,088 cwt. were exported (19,517 cwt. to Great Britain). It has to be remembered that the official returns include not only gutta percha of various grades of quality but also other inferior products sold under the name of gutta percha, some of which are referred to below under the head of substitutes. The value of gutta percha cannot therefore be correctly gauged from the value of the imports. In the ten years 1896-1906 the best qualities of gutta percha fetched from 4s. to about 7s. per ℔. Gutta percha, however, is used for few and special purposes, and there is no free market, the price being chiefly a matter of arrangement between the chief producers and consumers.

Characters and Properties.—Gutta percha appears in commerce in the form of blocks or cakes of a dirty greyish appearance, often exhibiting a reddish tinge, and just soft enough to be indented by the nail. It is subject to considerable adulteration, various materials, such as coco-nut oil, being added by the Malays to improve its appearance. The solid, which is fibrous in texture, hard and inelastic but not brittle at ordinary temperature, becomes plastic when immersed in hot water or if otherwise raised to a temperature of about 65°-66° C. in the case of gutta of the first quality, the temperature of softening being dependent on the quality of the gutta employed. In this condition it can be drawn out into threads, but is still inelastic. On cooling again the gutta resumes its hardness without becoming brittle. In this respect gutta percha differs from india-rubber or caoutchouc, which does not become plastic and unlike gutta percha is elastic. This property of softening on heating and solidifying when cooled again, without change in its original properties, enables gutta percha to be worked into various forms, rolled into sheets or drawn into ropes. The specific gravity of the best gutta percha lies between 0.96 and 1. Gutta percha is not dissolved by most liquids, although some remove resinous constituents; the best solvents are oil of turpentine, coal-tar oil, carbon bisulphide and chloroform, and light petroleum when hot. Gutta percha is not affected by alkaline solutions or by dilute acids. Strong sulphuric acid chars it when warm, and nitric acid effects complete oxidation.

When exposed to air and light, gutta percha rapidly deteriorates, oxygen being absorbed, producing a brittle resinous material.

Chemical Composition.—Chemically, gutta percha is not a single substance but a mixture of several constituents. As the proportions of these constituents in the crude material are not constant, the properties of gutta percha are subject to variation. For electrical purposes it should have a high insulating power and dielectric strength and a low inductive capacity; the possession of these properties is influenced by the resinous constituents present.

The principal constituent of the crude material is the pure gutta, a hydrocarbon of the empirical formula C10H16. It is therefore isomeric with the hydrocarbon of caoutchouc and with that of oil of turpentine. Accompanying this are at least two oxygenated resinous constituents—albane C10H16O and fluavil C20H32O—which can be separated from the pure gutta by the use of solvents. Pure gutta is not dissolved by ether and light petroleum in the cold, whereas the resinous constituents are removed by these liquids. The true gutta exhibits in an enhanced degree the valuable properties of gutta percha, and the commercial value of the raw material is frequently determined by ascertaining the proportion of true gutta present, the higher the proportion of this the more valuable is the gutta percha. The following are the results of analyses of gutta percha from trees of the genus Dichopsis or Palaquium:—

Gutta per cent. Resin per cent.

Dichopsis (or Palaquium) oblongifolia 88.8 11.2

” ” ” gutta 82.0 18.0

” ” ” polyantha 49.3 50.7

” ” ” pustulata 47.8 52.2

” ” ” Maingayi 24.4 75.6

The hydrocarbon of gutta percha, gutta, is closely related in chemical constitution to caoutchouc. When distilled at a high temperature both are resolved into a mixture of two simpler hydrocarbons, isoprene (C5H8) and caoutchoucine or dipentene (C10H16), and the latter by further heating can be resolved into isoprene, a hydrocarbon of known constitution which has been produced synthetically and spontaneously reverts to caoutchouc. The precise relationship of isoprene to gutta has not been ascertained, but recently Harries has further elucidated the connexion between gutta and caoutchouc by showing that under the action of ozone both break up into laevulinic aldehyde and hydrogen peroxide, but differ in the proportions of these products they furnish. The two materials must therefore be regarded as very closely related in chemical constitution. Like caoutchouc, gutta percha is able to combine with sulphur, and this vulcanized product has found some commercial applications.

Manufacture of Gutta Percha.—Among the earliest patents taken out for the manufacture of gutta percha were those of Charles Hancock, the first of which is dated 1843.

Before being used for technical purposes the raw gutta percha is cleaned by machinery whilst in the plastic state. The chopped or sliced material is washed by mechanical means in hot water and forced through a sieve or strainer of fine wire gauze to remove dirt. It is then kneaded or “masticated” by machinery to remove the enclosed water, and is finally transferred whilst still hot and plastic to the rolling-machine, from which it emerges in sheets of different thickness. Sometimes chemical treatment of the crude gutta percha is resorted to for the purpose of removing the resinous constituents by the action of alkaline solutions or of light petroleum.

Substitutes for Gutta Percha.—For some purposes natural and artificial substitutes for gutta percha have been employed. The similar products furnished by other plants than those which yield gutta percha are among the more important of the natural substitutes, of which the material known as “balata” or “Surinam gutta percha,” is the most valuable. This is derived from a tree, Mimusops balata (bullet tree), belonging to the same natural order as gutta percha trees, viz. Sapotaceae. It is a large tree, growing to a height of 80 to 100 ft. or more, which occurs in the West Indies, in South America, and is especially abundant in Dutch and British Guiana. The latex which furnishes balata is secreted in the cortex between the bark and wood of the tree. As the latex flows freely the trees are tapped by making incisions in the same fashion as in india-rubber trees, and the balata is obtained by evaporating the milky fluid. Crude balata varies in composition. It usually contains nearly equal proportions of resin and true gutta. The latter appears to be identical with the chief constituent of gutta percha. The properties of balata correspond with its composition, and it may therefore be classed as an inferior gutta percha. Balata fetches from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 8d. per ℔.

Among the inferior substitutes for gutta percha may be mentioned the evaporated latices derived from Butyrospermum Parkii (shea-butter tree of West Africa or karite of the Sudan), Calotropis gigantea (Madar tree of India), and Dyera costulata of Malaya and Borneo, which furnishes the material known as “Pontianac.” All these contain a small amount of gutta-like material associated with large quantities of resinous and other constituents. They fetch only a few pence per ℔, and are utilized for waterproofing purposes.