Officers as Creditors during the Ingrian War (1609–1617)

This chapter illustrates how the officers of the Swedish army largely financed the Ingrian War (1609–1617), in which the Swedes conquered the provinces of Ingria and Kexholm from Russia. As half a century of almost uninterrupted warfare had emptied the treasuries of the Swedish Realm, and as it was simultaneously fighting another war against the Danes, the Ingrian War became almost a private enterprise of the high officers of the army. The article shows that, without the officers, their capital and connections, and their willingness to finance the warfare, the Ingrian War would have ended in catastrophe, instead of becoming one of the founding stones of Sweden’s Age of Greatness.