Gustav Adolf of Nassau-Saarbrücken was Count of Saarbrücken and Major General at the Rhine of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.
Background
He was the second son of Count William Louis of Nassau-Saarbrücken (1590 — 22 August 1640) and Countess Anna Amalia of Baden-Durlach (1595–1651), who named him after king Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, who was still alive at the time. During the Thirty Years" War (1618–1648), the family fled to Metz, where his father died in 1640. In 1643 his mother returned to Saarbrücken with the children.
Education
From 1645 to 1649 he studied in Basel.
Career
He then fought on the French side against Spain. In 1658 he fought against Denmark in the service of the Swedish king Charles X Gustav, who was a duke of the house Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Later, he served in the imperial army, possibly until 1659.
He set about rebuilding the war-ravaged country, brought back refugees and recruited settlers for agriculture and skilled workers for the glass industry in Klarenthal.
Adolf could not resist King Louis XIV"s "reunion policy". He refused to swear the required oath of fealty from the king, even when he was captured in 1673 by the French and taken to Metz.
After his release the following year, he was not allowed to return to his country. Adolf enrolled in the imperial army in 1676 and participated in the battle of Phillipsburg in the Alsace in 1677.
He died of injuries suffered in combat on Mount Kochersberg (northwest of Strasbourg).
He was finally buried, after several temporary graves, in the Saint Thomas Church at Strasbourg. His mummified corpse was on display there from 1802 to 1990 in a glass sarcophagus.