Over the course of the war most European countries thought they saw an opening for personal gain and joined in, but they had a disastrous tendency to take turns and then be defeated in turn, or run into a stalemate. But, at last, after so many humiliations, occupations and setbacks, Gustavus Adolphus and his army transformed the anti-Ferdinand forces. A pan-European victory for Ferdinand II now became impossible. In a few months the Swedes did so much damage to the Imperial forces that even Gustavus’s death in battle in 1632 could not change the situation – and what became a rapidly deepening
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