Cromwell and the Baltic, 1654–6

Abstract

Cromwell’s relations with Sweden have been particularly open to misinterpretation. An undue reliance on official rhetoric (as illustrated in his letters to Charles X from 1655 to 1658) seemed to show Cromwell as enthusiastic about Charles’s role as a Protestant hero like Gustavus Adolphus, as he was in using `outdated’ Elizabethan nostalgia and religious fervour to form his view of Spain. He neglected the national interest in supporting Sweden, an aggressive power which dominated the Baltic to the fear of all its neighbours, without seeming to realise that national advancement and dynastic conflict had as much to do with Charles’s campaigns as pure Protestant zeal.¹