Well, I'm actually reaching the end of Gustavus Adolphus's career in my article and I am amazed at the amount of innovative changes that the Swedish King came up with for his modern army. He looked back to through history for inspiration and IMHO he got most of his ideas for his system of small integrated and highly flexible units of musketeers and pikemen from the Roman legion.

The battle of Breitenfield against the Baron of Tilly pitted the 16th century way of fighting with massed infantry squares against Gustavus's new T-shaped formations of musketeers and pikemen. If you look at the statistics of the battle, a Sweish victory does not look all that surprising as Adolphus actually had a numerical superiority but if you look at the first two and a half hours of the battle, Gustavus's Saxon allies prove useless and all ten thousand of them were routed in less than 30 mins. This left Gustavus in a grave predicament as not only was he now out-numbered, his left flank was dangerously exposed.

This is where the Swedish 'T' formations proved their speedy manoeuvrability. The Swedish line was reformed faster than the slow Imperial squares could take advantage and while the smaller but highly efficient Swedish units were able to pin down all the enemy infantry, the remaining Swedish cavalry rounded the flanks and captured the Catholic artillery. Accosted by infantry in front, artillery from behind and cavalry on the flanks, Tilly's formations collapsed.

The victory of the new system over the old was so emphatic that it is regularly compared to the victory of the Roman legion over the Greek phalanx

A friend of mine has recently returned from the USA and on the three hour drive home he was telling me about a military history magazine in the US called "Armchair General". It sounds fascinating and I get the feeling that I have heard of it before even here in the damp, non-historically-interested Northern Ireland.

I did a quick on Google and found the magazine's website. It seems they are always interested in finding new writers and this has rejuvenated my interest in writing.

I know have to find a subject that will appeal to the main market - the USA. The US is a very patriotic nation and why shouldn't they be so obviously writing something about American history would probably get the most notice, however, I do not know enough about the Civil War, the Indian Wars or Independence to adequately cover the subject, even in my own mind.

Next I thought about a famous general, a world famous general. When it comes to infantry, cavalry and artillery in the era of the 19th century, there is only one man. Forget Lee, Sherman, Grant, Blucher or even the man who has great connections with my homeland, the Duke of Wellington. That one man, if you haven't already guessed but I'm sure you have, is the first emperor of France, the second son of a Corsican rebel turned noble, Napoleone Buonaparte. Again however I found myself questioning my ability to write something different amongst the mass of excellent work already published about Napoleon. Austerlitz interests me greatly but I had to put that aside.

Finally, I think I found my subject. Someone linked heavily with the developement of the tactics used to such effect by Napoleon and later the Civil War generals. I was telling the same friend above about my idea and when he asked me who this man was I told him he wouldn't know him but that he was a Swede from the 17th century.

His response was "What kind of sh*t do you read? A 17th century Swede?"

Then he jokingly said "A 17th century Swede? His name must be Gustav. Gustav the Swede..."

He laughed out loud but I sat in bemusement. He looked over at me and enquired as to what was wrong

"His name was Gustav" was my reply

At that he spat out his mouthful of beer.

Anyway back to the subject at hand. I've plumbed for an article on Gustavus Adolphus II of Sweden, the "father of modern warfare". I figure that anyone who is interested in reading about Napoleon, Wellington or Lee won't mind reading about the man who virtually invented the combined arms tactics that these men were to later employ. Gustavus Adolphus used most of modern Germany as his battlefield during the Thirty Years War and also beat large hordes of Danes, Poles and Russians. His armies were almost entirely professional recruited from a young age and he himself regularly lead his cavalry wing, much like Alexander the Great.

His victories at Breitenfield and Lutzen, the latter actually being a posthumous because he died in the fighting, showed Europe how effective the Swedish Meteor's system was against superior numbers.

I look forward to reading more about this forgotten man