Gustation

[Fr., from Lat. gustatio.] The act of tasting. Gus'tatory, a . Pertaining to gust or taste. Gustavia, (goos- ta've -a,) a town, cap. of the Swedish island of St. Bartholomew, West Indies, on the S.W. coast; pop . about 12,000. Gusta'vus I., KING OF SWEDEN, known by the name of GUSTAVUS VASA, B. at Ockestadt, near Stockholm, 1490, was the son of Eric Vasa, duke of Gripsholm, who was descended from the ancient kings of Sweden, and beheaded by the Danish tyrant Christian II. This sovereign also got Gustavus into his hands, and, in the war in which he reduced Sweden, kept him several years a prisoner at Copenhagen. At length he made his escape, and having prevailed on the Dale carl i ans to throw off the Danish yoke, in May, 1521, he found himself at the head of 15,000 men. After various fortunes, he recovered the whole of Sweden from the tyranny of Christian. In 1523 he was crowned king of Sweden, and the crown made hereditary in his family. Luther an ism was established as the national religion of Sweden in his reign. D. 1559. His name is still revered by every Swede. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, king of Sweden, B. 1594, was the grandson of Gustavus Vasa. He succeeded his father, Charles IX., in 1611, and continued the war with Denmark, Ru ia, and Poland. He selected Axel Oxenstiern for his chief minister, and by his counsel restored the nobles to the rights and privileges of which they had been deprived, and thus attached them to his interests. He concluded peace with Denmark in 1613 on advantageous terms; was crowned in 1617; married in 1620 Eleanor, daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg, who became the mother of the celebrated Christina, his succe or on the throne; acquired subsequently great part of Livonia, and succe fully fought against Sigismund, king of Poland, who claimed the crown of Sweden. Invited by the Protestants of Germany, and urged by France, - prompted, too, by his own earnest regard for the Protestant faith, - he marched, in 1630, to the aid of the Protestants with a small force of 8,000 men, which was afterwards augmented by a body of English troops under the Duke of Hamilton. From the isle of Rügen, of which he first made himself master, he advanced Fig. 1217. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. from point to point through Pomerania and Mecklenburg, victorious at every step. He took 80 fortified towns in eight months. At length the emperor sent his great general Tilly to oppose him, and Gustavus won a great victory over him at Leipsic, on the 7th of Sept., 1631. Saxony heartily supported Gustavus, who soon after took Mentz, and in April, 1632, defeated Tilly again at the pa age of the Lech. The emperor, alarmed by the invasion of Bohemia, made Wal lens tein commander-in chief; who recovered Bohemia, and after holding a strong position near Nuremberg for many weeks, met Gustavus on the field of Lützen, on Nov. 5th, 1632. Victory was with the Swedes, but their heroic leader fell in the fight, not without suspicion of a a ination. G. A. was one of the noblest men, and one of the greatest military commanders of modern times. He was great also as a ruler and administrator, and did not allow war to exclude commerce and the internal regulation of his states from his earnest attention. GUSTAVUS III., king of Sweden, was the son of Adolphus Frederick and Louisa Ulrica, sister of Frederick II., king of Pru ia. He was B. in 1746, and succeeded his father in 1771. The kingdom was in a state of distraction and anarchy, and the nobles had monopolized the chief power, and were themselves divided into two hostile parties. Gustavus immediately applied himself to the suppre ion of these disorders, and by a bloodle revolution completely succeeded. A new constitution was introduced and accepted, and the king became supreme. The amendment of the laws next engaged his attention. He abolished the practice of torture, and introduced other good regulations in the administration of justice. He also formed a college of commerce, and reformed his army and navy. In 1788 he was involved in a war with Ru ia and Denmark. Gustavus headed his army himself, and stormed the defences of Frederick shall, where he took and destroyed a great number of ve els. In 1789, the king, hara ed by the opposition of some of the nobles, arrested the leading men, and compelled their acceptance of a measure which extended his authority considerably. On the breaking out of the French revolution, a coalition was formed between the northern powers and Spain, by which it was agreed that Gus tav us should march against France at the head of a considerable army; but while preparations were making, he was shot at a masquerade by Ankarström, a disbanded officer of the army, March 15th, 1792, and D. on the 29th. GUSTAVUS IV., king of Sweden, son of Gustavus III., was B. in 1778, and ascended the throne when his father fell by the hand of an a a in, March 29, 1792. When the Duke d'Enghien was seized, and, after a mock trial, shot by the orders of Napoleon, Gustavus vowed eternal hostility to the French emperor. He ordered his amba ador to leave Paris, dismi ed the French amba ador from Sweden, and returned to the king of Pru ia the order of the Black Eagle, with which Napoleon had also been invested, nobly saying, "that he never could, according to the laws of knighthood, consent to be brother companion to an a a in." His hostile proceedings,however, became at last so pregnant with danger to his country, that a council of state entreated him to make peace. This he refused to do; a revolution in Sweden was the consequence; Gustavus was imprisoned, and he afterwards signed his abdication. His uncle, the duke of Sudermania, was then raised to the throne under the title of Charles XIII., and Christian August us, of Holstein-Aug us ten burg, was invested with the title of Prince Royal of Sweden, or heir-apparent. This prince dying soon after, the succe ion was transferred to Marshal Bernadotte, who in 1816 ascended the Swedish throne as Charles John XIV. After his abdication, Gustavus was a mere wanderer upon the face of Europe, sometimes bearing the designation of Count Gottorp , sometimes that of the Duke of Holstein , and again the more humble one of Gustavson. He was in England, at Hart well, with Louis XVIII. His later years were spent in poverty. D. at St. Gall, 1837. co. Gustavus, in Ohio , a post-township of Trumbull Gusta'vus, in Tenne ee , a village of Greene co., about 60 m. E. by N. of Knoxville.