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CHAPTER V
THE VASA IN SWEDEN AND POLAND.(1560-1630.)
The amazing progress which Sweden owed to the
founder of the Vasa dynasty was achieved by a policy which was to leave deep
marks upon her future. “Necessity”, Gustavus held, “breaks law, not merely the
law of man, but at times the law of God also”. To him necessity always meant the
increase of royal power. Avaricious of power, he set himself to seize it at
home and to avoid hazarding it abroad; and in both aims he succeeded.
After his death change in the policy of Sweden
was inevitable. To maintain a strong monarchy might be possible, but the days
of seclusion were numbered. A State which owed everything to the Protestant
faith and the Baltic Sea could not remain indifferent while the fortunes of
both were in peril. Apart from the Counter-reformation, the decay of the
Teutonic Order, the decline of the Hanseatic League, the awakening of Russia,
and the expanding ambitions of Denmark were new arguments which must compel
Sweden to take action. The methods of Gustavus, moreover, were such as no other
King could follow. Himself a promoted noble, he pillaged the Church
remorselessly and administered the kingdom like a great domain. Seizing manors
by hundreds, he looked to them for a revenue and even for an army, while he labored
with marvelous energy to control the economic life of the whole nation. The
policy, both international and internal, by which his sons Erik and John
brought Sweden to the verge of dissolution (1560-98), her deliverance by his
third son Charles (1599-1611), and the efforts by which, under Charles and his son
Gustavus Adolphus, she gained organization, empire, and the status of a great
Power, form the theme of these pages.
Erik XIV, who succeeded without question to his
father's throne and treasure, had grown to manhood as heir to the kingdom. A
lover of pomp, he is said to have declared that he must seek to subjugate more
realms and lands, or he would not wear his crown. It may be doubted, however,
whether the strength of Sweden warranted so complete a breach with the policy
of Gustavus. Her resources ill responded to the breadth of her territory. The
ancient province of Finland was indeed profitable to the Crown. But Norway
still stretched across the mountains, while foreign and often hostile territory
intervened between Sweden and the States of western and central Europe. Her
single precarious outlet to the North Sea was a narrow strip of territory at
the mouth of the river Göta, where Elfsborg was to prove far from impregnable.
Between Elfsborg and Kalmar stretched the coast-provinces of Halland, Skane and Bleking, those fertile plains of the southern peninsula
which, like Gotland, the ancient stepping-stone across the Baltic, were fiefs
of the Danish Crown. Smaland, the border province,
was a stronghold of robbers and outlaws from both nations. From Kalmar to the
northern limit of civilization, which adventurous peasants and fishermen were
slowly pressing northward from Gefle, the long coast-line with innumerable
inlets for invaders justified the dictum of Gustavus Adolphus, “We are nowhere
weaker than in Sweden”.
The wealth of Sweden was no greater than might
be looked for in a land where less than one million people were strewn over a
vast area, and in a climate which neither incited nor richly rewarded industry.
Foreigners in Sweden remarked that the people were long-lived, adaptable, and
cheerful, but that they were unskilled in the arts and disinclined for sobriety
and steady work. Communications were poor, and commerce feeble. A great part of
the royal revenue was paid in kind. The mines and fisheries, from which
Gustavus had hoped so much, were not in themselves sufficient to support a
large population or to supply an abundant revenue. Education, at a moment when
Sweden had broken with Rome without as yet drawing full nourishment from
Wittenberg, was at its lowest. And government, by which alone these manifold
defects could be remedied, was still rude and insecure.
For the moment, indeed, the King was supreme.
The Hereditary Settlement of 1544, by which elective gave place to hereditary
monarchy, symbolized his triumph over Church, people, and nobles. From each of
these classes, however, a sovereign weaker than Gustavus must experience
renewed rivalry for power. The Church, crippled and plundered as it was, had
begun to develop a force of corporate resistance which baffled each of Erik’s
four successors upon the throne. The people, in spite of all the sharp lessons
of Gustavus, had not completely renounced their practice of armed resistance to
measures which displeased them. Only by fair words or
show of force could the Crown secure the obedience of a province. Believing themselves
defrauded if any intermediate authority was thrust between their sovereign and
themselves, they obstructed the creation of adequate executive, judicial, and
legislative organs of the State.
Difficulties of the monarchy
in Sweden. [1544-60
In general, however, the influence of the people
lay on the side of the Vasa against the caste which formed the most dangerous
rival of monarchy. The nobles, sons of the men who perished in the Blood-bath
of 1520, were enriched with the spoils of the Church, and had not forgotten
that the Hereditary Settlement of 1544 was a blow to aristocracy. They had
acquiesced in the elevation of the Vasa, but they conceived themselves to be
entitled both to curtail the powers of the Crown and to share in their
exercise. Their ambition was to secure a position with regard to the King
similar to that enjoyed by their peers in the Empire. They claimed that their
performance of knight-service, the maintenance of a prescribed number of
mounted soldiers, freed their estates from taxation and made them practically
supreme over the districts in which they lived. To what extremes of lawlessness
their pretensions might lead was seen when a bold noble annexed the lands and
forests of the Crown, punished one of his bailiffs who had fled to Court, and,
when another bailiff cut down a wood, proposed to hang him together with every
peasant who had shared in the offence. The nobles possessed a monopoly of seats
in the Rad, a small council out of which the Swedish Diet grew, and which
except in times of stress performed the ordinary functions of a National
Assembly. The chief offices thus fell into their hands, and they protested
strongly, and in the main successfully, against the employment of any officers
of State whatsoever who were not of native and of gentle birth. They thus
formed a check on progress when the King was competent, and a menace to the
power of the Crown in the hands of a ruler unequal to defending it.
In the reign of Gustavus the danger from the
nobles was latent, and the danger from the Church and people was averted by
force. Erik was confronted in addition by danger from three great royal
duchies, which was in great part created by his father. The testament of
Gustavus, of which part received the sanction of the Estates in 1547 and the
whole in 1560, provided his sons with appanages, and
attempted by admonitions and regulations to secure their future cooperation for
the good of the kingdom. The most weighty part of the testament was that by
which the King conferred upon the three half-brothers of Erik rights of
hereditary sovereignty over great portions of Sweden. John was confirmed in the
authority over Abo, Kumogard, Aland and Raseborg which he had already exercised for several years,
and thus remained master of Finland. Charles received the greatest part of Södermanland and Nerike with Vermeland, the whole forming a broad belt
across the kingdom. Magnus, who was older than Charles but weaker in mind, was
to rule adjacent territories to the south, including some two-thirds of östergötland. By whatever motives these dispositions were
inspired-whether to save part at least of the realm from the sway of Erik, or
to curb the nobles by the creation of a class of royal Dukes, or to indulge an
affection for the younger sons which was stronger than statesmanship, or to
satisfy their equitable claim to share in the family inheritance-the result was
that Sweden was divided and its very independence placed in jeopardy for more
than sixty years.
1560-2] Erik XIV. Constructive measures.
The death of Gustavus caused a crisis in which
the decisive factor was the character of his successor. Erik possessed a full
share of the ability with which the descendants of Gustavus were endowed. His
political insight was not contemptible, while his political imagination was
active. A child of the Renaissance, he took delight in composing verse and
prose, in painting and music, in languages, in translating the classics and in
studying the stars. But this tropical luxuriance, as Geijer finely suggests,
was the product of subterranean fires. Erik was too ill-balanced to endure the
stress of kingship. The extravagance with which he pressed his suit upon
Elizabeth of England is well known. As Crown Prince he had delighted in the
wild orgies of his Court at Kalmar, and he was already suspicious almost to the
verge of madness.
For three years, however, the young King
grappled vigorously with his task. The most momentous problem of policy was the
establishment of a single sovereignty within the Swedish State. In April, 1561,
Erik secured the concurrence of the Estates in a statute known from the scene
of the Diet as the Articles of Arboga. By this enactment his brothers were
compelled to renounce the dangerous prerogatives which the testament of
Gustavus had conferred upon them. Dwellers in the duchies were to swear fealty
to the King instead of to the Dukes, and the royal supremacy was established in
matters of war and negotiation, taxation, appeals, the nomination of judges and
of bishops, and the conferment of nobility and privilege. This weighty
assertion of the power of the Crown was accompanied by the establishment of a
royal Court of Appeal, which met one of the most pressing needs of the growing
nation. A body of justices was appointed, part to remain at Stockholm and part
to go on circuit when required.
Having bridled the Dukes, Erik next endeavored
to regulate the status of the nobles, to whose support his triumph at Arboga
was due. To add splendor and security to the Crown, he conferred upon his
intimates the new dignities of Count and Baron, and endowed them with grants of
royal revenues, which were moderate in amount but hereditary. He then set
himself to correlate the duties and the privileges attendant upon noble birth.
The scale of knight-service was fixed in 1562 by the Upsala Constitution at the
rate of one well-appointed horseman for every 300 marks of income from
hereditary estates or 200 marks from fiefs of the
Crown. Manor-house and home-farm were not to be reckoned in, but every
nobleman, however poor, must maintain a soldier, or lose caste and submit to
ordinary taxation. The burden imposed by the Upsala Constitution was nominally
less onerous by one-half than that imposed by Gustavus in 1559; but Erik
enforced his claims with such stringency as to annul this benefit and gradually
to alienate the nobles.
The Livonian question. [1561-3
Meanwhile the future both of the King and of his
realm was being determined in Livonia. At this moment the struggle for
predominance in the Baltic, a struggle vital to the Power which held both
Stockholm and Abo, entered the phase which within the compass of 160 years
(1561-1721) was to bring to Sweden her glory, her empire, and her downfall. The
Teutonic Order was moribund, and Erik, as heir to Sweden, and John, as lord of
Finland, had united to oppose their father's policy of timid home-keeping and
to secure for the Vasa dynasty a share in Esthonia and Livonia (LATVIA). During the summer of 1561 the Protestant town of Reval became Swedish; but at the end of November the Order
made complete submission to Sigismund II of Poland. Sweden, it seemed, must
either abandon her hopes of aggrandizement or prepare for war. Russia and
Denmark however were also candidates for the prize, and Sigismund suggested a
third solution which promised immediate peace at the hazard of future
struggles. In July, 1561, he proposed an alliance of Sweden and Poland against
Russia, to be cemented by the marriage of one of his sisters with Duke John.
Erik seemed inclined to acquiesce in an arrangement which would have made his
brother all but heir presumptive to the Polish Crown. In February, 1562,
however, he forbade the match and proceeded to capture Pernau.
John, after long hesitation, defied both the royal command and the Articles of
Arboga. In October he married Catharine Jagello and
received seven fortresses in Livonia as security for the repayment of money
borrowed by Sigismund. Erik, who suspected his brother of treasonable intrigues
in Sweden, summoned the Estates to Stockholm and procured from them a sentence
of forfeiture and death against him (June 7,1563). The Duke defended Abo; but
in August he was forced to surrender to an army of 10,000 men. Many of his
servants were put to death, and he was imprisoned in the lonely fortress of Gripsholm. There he remained for four years, while the King
and his low-born minister Göran Persson subjected
Sweden to a reign of terror.
The downfall of John was accompanied by the
progress of the Swedish arms in Livonia; but for both disasters Poland was
amply avenged by Denmark, her new ally. The relations between Erik and
Frederick II had grown steadily worse. The hereditary rivalry between the
Scandinavian Kings was symbolized by the Three Crowns of Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway, which each of them bore on his escutcheon.
It was now inflamed by the quest of empire on the eastern shore of the Baltic.
Erik, who hoped to drive the Danes from the Scandinavian peninsula, toiled to
win allies by way of marriage and wooed Elizabeth of England, Mary of Scotland,
and Christina of Hesse-Cassel. The Danes on the other hand made use of their
superiority at sea by intercepting the Swedish embassies and supplies, until in
June, 1563, they were severely defeated off Bornholm by Jakob Bagge. The Emperor summoned a congress at Rostock,
but strove in vain to preserve peace. In August the war known as the Northern
Seven Years' War was formally declared by Denmark (1563-70).
1563-6] The Northern Seven
Years' War.
Sweden was in great peril, for her rise had
given offence to several Powers. Frederick secured the alliance of the Poles,
of the Elector Augustus of Saxony, and of the men of Lübeck, who feared for
their trade with Livonia and hoped much from the restoration of a Danish
dynasty in Sweden. As against these diplomatic triumphs, Erik could only point
to an agreement for seven years' peace with Russia. He failed either to develop
the latent conflict of interest between the allies or to secure
counter-alliances with their several enemies. He alienated the Emperor by
slighting the Congress of Rostock, and lost the Hessian marriage by addressing
a love-letter to Queen Elizabeth which was seized and despatched to the
Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel by the Danes. Then, with the consent of his Estates,
he sued for the hand of Renée of Lorraine, only to affront all parties by a
secret match with his mistress Karin Mansdotter, the
offspring of a common soldier.
In the field the King's influence was even more
disastrous than in the Cabinet. While the Swedish army was a national force
which might soon be made formidable, Frederick was trusting to some 30,000
German mercenaries, a host which could not long be satisfied with the spoils of Smaland and Västergötland.
Erik and Persson, however, were not strategists but barbarians, and the war
became a series of brutalities. Both armies devastated where they could not
conquer, and not seldom put their prisoners to death. At home the Swedes gained
no signal success and suffered several grave disasters. Chief of these was the
loss of Elfsborg, whose fall in September, 1563, cut Sweden off from the North
Sea. Such was the isolation of the kingdom that wine could not be procured for
the administration of the Eucharist, and the King outraged the feelings of the
hierarchy by authorizing the consecration of water or water mixed with honey.
In September, 1565, however, a foothold on the
western coast was regained by the capture of Varberg,
while in Norway, in Livonia, and on the sea, wherever Erik was not, the dreary
struggle was waged on equal terms. Klas Kristersson (Horn) proved himself a worthy successor to Jakob Bagge, until he succumbed
to the plague in 1566. Gustavus, moreover, by his lifelong invective against
"the Jutes", had made the war popular in Sweden. In March, 1566, the
Estates protested that they were ready to
sacrifice life, lands, and all that they had rather than submit to an adverse
peace.
Murder of the Sture. [1566-8
The year 1567, however, witnessed the collapse
of Erik's position both at home and abroad; though he gained the Russian alliance
by undertaking to surrender the wife of his brother John to her rejected
suitor, Ivan the Terrible. The Tsar afterwards asserted that he had believed
her to be a widow and had wished to restore her to Poland in safety. Erik could
not advance even such excuses as these. His infamy profited him but little. The
Russian alliance did not save the Swedes from disasters in Norway and Livonia,
while at home misgovernment was becoming insupportable. Erik's capricious
tyranny had not spared the high nobility, and he was conscious of their
alienation from himself. Haunted by fears of treason, he suddenly struck at the
great family of Sture, the kinsmen of his own
half-brothers. In 1566 the young Nils Sture was
condemned as a traitor. The King forced him to ride through the streets of
Stockholm with a crown of straw upon his head, then pardoned him and entrusted
him with a mission to Lorraine. Next, with another change of purpose, he caused Göran Persson to indict the Sture and many other nobles before the Estates at Upsala, and when Nils Sture returned from Lorraine, he flung him into prison. On
May 22, 1567, however, the King expressly guaranteed his safety; but two days
later he visited him in prison and stabbed him to death. The old Count Svante Sture, his son Erik, and
two other lords were next despatched by the soldiery, and the King's tutor, Beurreus, paid for his remonstrance with his life.
The royal assassin fled from Upsala and for some
days wandered demented through the land. The interregnum attested both the
weakness and the strength of the Vasa. No one arose, either to act for the King
or to supplant him. John was in prison, Magnus had lost his reason, and Charles
was still a boy. At this moment, moreover, the indicted nobles were found
guilty of treason by the Estates. Within a month the King had recovered himself
sufficiently to set about the work of conciliation, and he allowed Persson to
be condemned to death. In the autumn, however, he became possessed by the
belief that John had supplanted him in the kingship, and in a grotesque
encounter the two brothers in turn did homage to each other.
Meanwhile the Danes were preparing to strike a
blow of unusual severity. In a triumphant winter campaign Daniel Rantzau, “the Turenne of Denmark”, swept through Smaland and Ostergötland, burned
and pillaged more than 1400 homesteads, and took by surprise the camp of the
defenders at Norrby. He crowned the bold enterprise
by a masterly retreat, which encouraged Erik to give himself the airs of a
conqueror.
During the year 1568 the King steadily
undermined his throne. He set John at liberty, restored Persson to favor, made
Karin Mansdotter Queen of
Sweden, and extorted the recognition of her son as heir to the throne. At this
time, however, John and Charles were organizing a revolt. On July 12, one week
after the coronation, the strong fortress of Vadstena fell into their hands. Their troops were few, but the rule of Erik had become
impossible. He appealed to the Dukes and to the people, fought bravely and
allowed his hated minister to be tortured to death, but all in vain. On
September 29 Stockholm opened her gates and Erik was compelled to abdicate. In
January, 1569, he was deposed by the Diet. He was hurried from prison to prison;
but while he lived the Government could not feel secure. Early in 1575 a secret
meeting of the Rad together with the Bishops and several priests condemned him
to death, and two years later he was poisoned by command of his brother John.
1568-75] Deposition of Erik
XIV. John III.
John III, who received the homage of the Estates
in January, 1569, owed his position to the endorsement of his claim by Duke
Charles and the nobles. He paid his debt to the former by renouncing the
Articles of Arboga and to the latter by conceding many privileges. The counts
and barons received fresh grants of revenues and judicial rights, and became in
all essentials an hereditary feudal aristocracy. The King swore to abstain from
promoting low-born ministers, and secured the nobles against imprisonment
without trial, and against trial otherwise than by their peers. They were made
free to engage in foreign trade, and to sell the product of their estates
without regard to the commercial monopoly of the towns. Above all,
knight-service was reduced from the standard of 1562. Henceforth, one horseman
had to be maintained for every 400 marks of revenue in time of war, and for
every 800 marks in time of peace. Those who were too poor to perform
knight-service might sell their lands and yet retain their caste.
Concession to the nobles was thus the keynote of
a reign in which the monarchy was menaced by a fresh peril. The Rad was now
recruited from nobles of a new generation, led by the houses of Bielke, Brahe, Sparre, Banér and Fleming. Not a few of them were educated and
travelled men, and in Erik Sparre they possessed a
skilful apologist of oligarchy. Their ambition to control the hereditary
monarchy through the Rad was certain to tax the statesmanship of Erik’s
successor.
John III, though himself ambitious, was no
statesman. The obstinacy which he had displayed in Livonia was not weakened by
adversity or by time. He loved regal pomp, and, though bankrupt, built more
lavishly than any other King of Sweden. He possessed the hot temper of the
Vasa, and is said to have once literally trampled under foot a recalcitrant clergyman. His natural bias towards theology had been
strengthened by his studies while a prisoner and by the influence of his Papist
consort. As King he neglected administration to pursue the chimera of
autocratic religious comprehension, and for many years made it his chief object
to force his Liturgy upon the people.
Under such a King, in a land which still
depended on personal government, the character and conduct of the Duke became
of great importance. Charles, who since Magnus had become insane ruled in his
own right over about one-twelfth of the nation, set an example which contrasted
strongly with the misrule which prevailed beyond the confines of his duchy. He
claimed, moreover, to be entitled by birth to a share in the sovereignty of the
kingdom; and as the strongest of the sons of Gustavus he exercised great
influence on policy. As a rallying-point of opposition to the injurious
innovations of the King he rendered invaluable service to the State. The
intrigues of John with the Counter-reformation and with Poland were steadily
watched by a harsh and unbending colleague of high courage and Calvinistic
sympathies, whose ideal was the maintenance of the Vasa dynasty by adhesion to
the principles laid down by Gustavus.
Duke Charles. Peace of Stettin. [1568-73
The accession of the husband of Catharine Jagello was equivalent to peace with Poland. In foreign
affairs, therefore, the first duty of the new Government was to bring to an end
the destructive and unprofitable war with Denmark. As early as November, 1568,
indeed, the envoys of the rebellious Dukes had signed a treaty at Roeskilde by which Sweden surrendered her conquests,
yielded the right to wear the Three Crowns, and paid 200,000 thalers.
Frederick offered to renounce the indemnity, but John and the Estates preferred
to fight on in the hope of driving the Danes from the peninsula. The campaign
of 1569-70, however, only increased the need of peace. The Danes recovered Varberg and sent a fleet to Reval,
while Ivan, balked of the wife of John, flung his ambassadors into prison.
France and Poland offered in vain to mediate, but the Emperor was more
successful, and the Seven Years' War closed, as it began, with a congress at
Stettin.
After more than five months' negotiation, the
Peace of Stettin was concluded (December, 1570) on the basis of the mutual
restoration of conquests. The question of the Three Crowns was referred to an
Imperial Court of arbitration; and Sweden was compelled to redeem Elfsborg by
the payment of 150,000 thalers.
To raise this sum it was necessary to
subject all movables in Sweden to an inquest more searching than that of Domesday. The peasants contributed one-tenth of their
substance, the unburnt towns one-twelfth, and the
burnt towns one-eighteenth. Payment was made in no less than seven currencies.
The tax-gatherers were compelled to compute the decline in value from the
standard money of Gustavus through the best, medium, and ordinary impressions
of Erik down to the still baser coins issued by John in 1568,1569, and 1570.
1573-87] The Russian War.
Domestic opposition.
Further debasement, however, was yet to come,
for a thirteen years’ war with Russia had begun. In the days of Gustavus,
Ivan's hordes had sold captive men and women for a few pence. In 1573, when
they took Weissenstein, they bound to stakes the survivors of the little garrison
and roasted them alive. Sweden was too poor to pay for vengeance and in 1577
she had lost all Livonia save Reval. At this point,
however, the King of Poland, Stephen Bàthory,
intervened. Poles and Swedes in alliance overthrew the enemy at Venden (1578), drove him from Livonia, invaded Ingria and took Narva (September,
1581). The Tsar, though shut out from the Baltic, was glad to conclude a truce
with both States. The truce of Pliusa with Sweden was
to run for three years, reckoned from August, 1583; and in 1585 the term was
prolonged till 1590.
In 1583, for the first time for twenty years,
Sweden was at peace with all her neighbors. Within her own borders, however,
she was torn by strife. The weak and fitful absolutism of the King could not
fail to provoke general opposition, and it seemed at times as if civil war were
in sight. The King's extravagance imposed unwonted taxation upon a people
harried by plague and exhausted by war. Too feeble or too self-satisfied to
create any permanent organs of administration, John carried on his slovenly
rule with the aid of secretaries, a practice which his subjects deemed
unlawful. Shocked by the many abuses, the Rad continually but vainly protested,
on one occasion begging the King to refrain from damaging his health by the
bursts of choler which their interference provoked. But the brunt of
resistance, ecclesiastical and political alike, was borne by Charles. The
causes of discord between the brothers were innumerable, and the chief of these
was beyond remedy. In Church matters, in taxation, and in the appointment of
officials, the Duke asserted an independence which was clearly incompatible
with the unity of the kingdom and the sovereignty of the King. On the other
hand it was Charles alone who maintained good government, Protestantism, and
national freedom so far as his power extended.
For the third time since the death of Gustavus
the alliance of the nobles decided a conflict between his sons. In January,
1582, John secured from the Diet at Stockholm both the acceptance of his
Liturgy for the whole kingdom and the substantial revival of the Articles of
Arboga against the pretensions of the Duke. In 1585, moreover, less than
sixteen months after the death of Catharine, John widened the breach by his mésalliance with Gunilla Bielke. In 1587, indeed,
Charles gave way sufficiently to admit of the promulgation at Vadstena of a constitution drawn up by Erik Sparre to record the victory of the King. The Liturgy,
however, he would never tolerate. The clergy of his duchy were denounced by the
King as “members of the devil”, and the royal bailiffs were instructed to
imprison them as outlaws if they set foot in royal Sweden. Henceforward,
however, the quest of the Polish Crown and the quarrel with the Rad which arose
from it stood foremost in the mind of the King.
Sigismund and the Polish Crown.
[1587-92
The death of King Stephen Bathory in December, 1586, offered John an opportunity of consoling himself for his own
rejection in 1573 and 1574 by securing the
Polish Crown for his son Sigismund. After long hesitation the Prince resolved
to become a candidate. His competitors were the Tsar Feodor, Andreas, brother
of the late King, and four Austrian Archdukes. Thanks in great part to the
unscrupulous tongue of Sparre, Sigismund was able to
outbid them all with a delusive undertaking to cede to Poland the Swedish
conquests in Livonia. The Queen Dowager and the Chancellor Zamoyski procured
his election by the nobles on August 9, 1587; but three days later the Zborowski faction prevailed upon the Senate to choose
Archduke Maximilian as King. In mid-September Sigismund landed at Danzig, only
to find himself dependent for throne and safety on Zamoyski's troops; while the impossibility of either repudiating or fulfilling his
bargain with regard to Livonia heightened the difficulty of his position.
The repulse of Maximilian from Cracow, where
Sigismund held his entry, and the surrender of the Archduke after a decisive
battle at Pitschen in Silesia (January, 1588), did
not bring the troubles of the former to an end. Some hated Sigismund for his
Swedish birth, which made him in their eyes no better than the Germans whose
dress and language he affected. Many missed in him the frank, genial, and
martial temper of a Polish sovereign. Zamoyski, rather than the King, led the
ascendant party in the State. Sigismund’s position in many respects resembled
that of William III in England, who likewise wearied of the crown. Early in
1589 he entered upon secret negotiations with a view to installing the Archduke
Ernest in his stead.
The conspiracy against the Republic was
chastised by a public humiliation which left the monarchy even weaker than
before. At the so-called Diet of Inquisition in 1592 the Primate of Gnesen solemnly arraigned the conduct and policy of the
King. “Sire! think upon your oath”, he cried, “take warning by your
predecessor, Henry (of Valois), who broke faith and perished miserably”.
Zamoyski, who remained till his death in 1605 the champion of Polish
nationality, added words of defiance and warning and demanded the dismissal of
the foreign guards. At length the King capitulated, and promised in writing
that he would never abandon the kingdom, or diminish the privileges of the
nation, or nominate his successor.
Before Sigismund sailed from Sweden to Poland
the prospect of a personal union between States so incompatible had compelled
John and the Rad to formulate a plan for their future relations. Both before
and after his mission to Warsaw Erik Sparre strove to
safeguard the interests of Sweden and of the Bad by means of a document finally
signed by John and Sigismund at Kalmar (September, 1587).
The so-called Statute of Kalmar asserted
complete equality between Poland and Sweden and provided for arbitration of
their differences on equal terms. In spirit, however, it recognized the
precedence of the older kingdom. Sigismund, when King of both countries, might
live in Poland on condition of maintaining a Swedish council
and chancery at his side and of visiting Sweden at least once in three years.
In law and government, in foreign policy and religion, the Statute provided for
the independence of Sweden and her provinces in Livonia and Russia with a care
which extended even to the possibility of the King's inducing the Pope to
absolve him from observing its provisions. The realm however was to be
independent only in order that the Rad might govern. The substance of power in
Sweden was to pass to a Council of seven great nobles, one of whom alone was to
be chosen by the Duke. The design to depress Charles to the rank of a noble was
so patent that the Statute was concealed from him for several years; and he
therefore never acknowledged its validity.
1587-92] Poland and Sweden.
Death of John III.
No sooner had they reached their goal than both
father and son wished to retrace their steps. John, soured by opposition and
weary of ruling, cared for nothing save to regain the companionship of his
heir. He favored Sigismund's plan of abdication and met his son at Reval in the summer of 1589, resolved to bring him back to
Sweden. The Swedes however united with the Poles in protesting against a
repetition of the crime of Henry of Valois. Even the staff of John's army
raised its voice to condemn so wanton a challenge to war. John, who had
consistently defied the Rad, declaring that he would go to Reval “though men should fall as grass in summer before the scythe”, answered only
with harsh rebukes; but Sigismund, on whom many influences were at work, proved
more pliable. At the end of September, after two months of intercourse, father
and son parted; John with a thirst for vengeance upon the Rad which the remnant of his days proved too scanty to appease.
In his bitterness against his ancient allies
John sought reconciliation with his ancient enemy. In 1590 he surrendered to
the Duke all the advantages won at Arboga, Vadstena,
and Kalmar, ascribing the several statutes to the machinations of wicked men.
On these terms Charles gladly took upon himself a great part of the burden of
government and countenanced the King's campaign against the rivals of monarchic
power. Erik Sparre, Hogenskild and Ture Bielke, Axel Lejonhufvud and other great nobles were imprisoned and
deprived of their fiefs on charges of treason, of which the most tangible was
their original advocacy of the acceptance of the Polish Crown. At the same time
the hereditary character of the monarchy was strengthened by a provision for an
eventual female succession. The discord in Sweden favored the Russians, who had
renewed the war in January, 1590; while the aged King could only prosecute his
generals and negotiate with the Tsar. In November, 1592, he died.
Sigismund and the Swedish
Church. [1592-3
At the death of John, Sweden and Poland became
associated under the sway of a King incapable either of compromise in politics
or of tolerance in religion. Inscrutable, imaginative, chaste, tenacious, and able,
Sigismund was by no means a force to be despised. The elective character of the
Polish Crown and the jealousy of the nobles towards the relics of royal power
combined with his Swedish birth and Jesuit education to prevent him from
becoming a Polish patriot. Unrestrained by ties of nationality, he surrendered
himself to the service of Rome, and at her behest continued to bear the burden
of Polish kingship. So to augment his power that he might become the northern
counterpart of Philip II, a monarch who should purge Poland of heresy and bring
Sweden and even Russia into the fold, this was the dream of his life. The
Jesuits were his counselors, the Habsburgs his allies, and the Pope his master.
Clement VIII, whose interest and influence in Poland had survived his mission
of conciliation in the early days of Sigismund's rule, was not slow to insist
upon the duty of converting Sweden. In the spring of 1593 he sent Bartolomeus Povsinski with a
contribution of 20,000 scudi to further this aim. Sigismund was admonished to fill the vacant Swedish sees
with Roman Catholics, and to provide in Stockholm, or, if that were impossible,
in Poland, a Jesuit College for the Swedish youth.
Meanwhile the Swedish Church declared its
Lutheranism by the Upsala Resolution, already noticed in a previous volume,
which became the national covenant of the Swedish people. The fanatic Abraham Angermannus was appointed to the metropolitan see of
Upsala, and all preparations were made for securing ecclesiastical guarantees
from the King as a condition of his coronation. Amid the storms of the
Counter-reformation, however, Sweden needed a ruler who could give her more
than promises to refrain from assailing her Church. The union devised at Kalmar
and upheld by the great nobles would at best revive the irresponsible
aristocracy with which Gustavus had done away. It was likely to degrade Sweden
to the position of a Polish dependency, to imperil her Church, and to sacrifice
her empire. The natural centre of resistance to the vassalage of his country
was Duke Charles, who had effected a reconciliation with the Rad and arranged,
with the sanction of a small meeting of the Estates, that they should govern
jointly with himself during his nephew's absence (January, 1593).
The authority of Charles, however, as none felt
more keenly than himself, was indispensable to the welfare of Sweden rather
than conformable to her laws. The history of the years (1592-9) during which
Sigismund remained King of Sweden in name records the successive stages by
which an impossible position changed into revolution. First it became clear
that a genuine regency of Charles on behalf of Sigismund was impracticable.
While great nobles such as Klas Fleming, the ruler of
Finland, refused to recognize any authority but that of the King, Charles and
the Rad tried in vain to extort from him a guarantee
of the Upsala Resolution, and failing this to prevent him from setting foot in
Sweden. At the end of September, 1593, he landed
at Stockholm, and Abraham Angermannus unwillingly
stood face to face with the papal legate Malaspina.
Sigismund found Duke, Rad, and Diet unanimous in their demand for the religious
guarantee; and the favour which he could not refrain
from showing to Poles and Romanists embittered the long struggle which
followed. The King resisted with all his might the constitutional innovation of
a guarantee prior to coronation. At last, however, he was forced to give way.
He recognised the election of the heretic Archbishop,
and received his crown at Upsala from the heretic Bishop of Strängnäs (February, 1594).
1593-5] Coronation of Sigismund.
Rule of Charles.
The victory had been won by the firmness of
Charles. Scouting the King's offer of privileges for himself as the price of
privileges for the Romanists, he arrayed an army at Upsala to uphold the policy
of “No guarantee, no coronation”. Sigismund, however, protested secretly and
promised to the Papists what he had sworn to deny them. By the advice of Malaspina he conferred upon six of his dependents the
dignity of Lord-Lieutenant, hoping thereby to secure protection for the
Romanists and to curtail the authority of Duke and Rad. Early in August, 1594,
he returned to Poland. Charles sought to frustrate the disintegrating policy of
the King by renewing his alliance with the Rad and by demanding the full powers
of an Administrator of the kingdom. The benefits of his rule were patent to
all. He earned the honorable nickname of Peasant King. He contrived to pay the
army, reduced the face-value of the debased coin, founded towns, and restored
Upsala as a seat of learning. In May, 1595, moreover, he concluded the Peace of Teusin with the Tsar.
At Teusin the Swedes
agreed to surrender the county of Keksholm in return
for the recognition by Russia of their title to Narva and Esthonia, while a boundary commission was
appointed to avoid the recurrence of old disputes. The establishment of peace
with Russia and perhaps also the birth of his son Gustavus Adolphus (December
9, 1594) encouraged Charles in the inevitable conflict with Sigismund, the
Romanists, and the Lords-Lieutenant. In order to set his authority beyond
dispute he took up the weapons of his father. First he threatened to resign,
and when this no longer sufficed to bend the Rad to his will, he made a direct
appeal to the people. In October, 1595, the Estates, including representatives
of the army, obeyed his summons to Söderköping and
granted him all that he desired. Romanist priests were expelled from the
kingdom; Romanist laymen, from office; and Sigismund was to rule only through
the agency of Charles and the Rad.
Though some of the nobles dissented from the
resolution of Söderköping, the Duke found in it a
sufficient warrant to proceed. He pressed his claims with the masterful and
lawyer-like assertion which marks the Vasa. Arguing that Sigismund, who had
sworn to keep the law of Sweden, had thereby abjured the right to veto what a
Diet resolved, he fell upon the Romanists and the Lords-Lieutenant. Klas Fleming and the army of Finland, however,
supported the King, and Charles failed to induce the Rad to levy war against
them. He therefore broke with the Rad and the great nobles, but again courted
and received a mandate from the nation. In February, 1597, the Estates,
disregarding the inhibition of Sigismund and the unprecedented absence of the Rad,
met at Arboga and admonished all men to embrace the cause of the Duke. Soon
Elfsborg and Kalmar were in his hands, and every province had endorsed the
Arboga resolution. Erik Sparre, Sten Banér, and the three Gustafssons fled the country; the commandant at Kalmar swore to resist Sigismund; and the
revolution reached the stage of war. Once more a Vasa called the Swedish
peasants to arms against a monarchy which, although the nobles for the most
part adhered to it, was in fact a foreign tyranny. In 1596-7 Klas Fleming was forced to put down two peasants’ risings
in East Bothnia; and in the following year the men of Dalarne tortured and murdered James Neave, a royal officer
who strove to rouse them against the Duke. At Stockholm (August, 1597), at Upsala
(February, 1598), and at Vadstena (June, 1598),
national assemblies showed that neither the
abstention of a faction nor the commands of the King could shake the alliance
between Duke and people. In 1597 Charles descended upon Finland, where Stalarm had succeeded Fleming, and took Abo. Next year Gustaf Banér and Ture Bielke fled to Denmark.
Deposition of Sigismund in Sweden. [1597-9
At last Sigismund resolved to assert his
authority by force of arms. In July, 1598, he despatched Stalarm with 3000 men to Gröneborg, north of Stockholm, while he himself sailed from
Danzig to Kalmar. The army of Finland, which arrived first, fled at the sight
of a few peasants led by two professors from Upsala. The King, however, was
admitted to Kalmar and Stockholm, and many nobles embraced his cause. He sailed
northward to Stegeborg, where a long negotiation
under arms with the Duke developed into a battle. The royal troops gained the
upper hand; but Sigismund called a halt at the moment of victory, only to be
routed a fortnight later at Stângebro (September, 1598).
He surrendered five members of the Rad as the price of an armistice, and it was
provided by the Treaty of Linköping that both forces
should disband.
Charles kept faith; but Sigismund as usual
played false. He fled to Poland, where he was received with enthusiasm, and
declared that he would return to Sweden as a conqueror. This conduct only
hastened his deposition. In February, 1599, an assembly of nobles and bishops
at Jonköping declared that, unless the King would
return to Sweden without an army or send his son Wladislav to be brought up in the evangelical faith, they could obey him no longer. In
July, after Charles had stormed Kalmar, Sigismund was formally deposed by the
Diet assembled at Stockholm. Three months later the conquest of Finland was complete.
At the same time Narva joyfully accepted the
Protestant Charles, and in April, 1600, Esthonia sought his protection against the aggressive nationalism of the Poles.
There was much, however, to mitigate and to disguise
the revolution which was thus accomplished. The actual government of Sweden
underwent little alteration. Sigismund had never ruled, and Charles was not yet
King. “The Hereditary Prince of the realm of Sweden and Duke of Södermanland” had defeated an attempt of his nephew and the
great nobles to deprive him of the political influence which he had acquired
before the death of John, and which the mass of the nation was resolved that he
should retain. His ideal of government, which was wholly conservative, remained
unchanged. It was the personal rule of the head of the House of Vasa, fettered
only by his oath to the nation and by the law of Sweden. Valuing the
principles of Gustavus more than primogeniture, he took the crown from the head
of a nephew, without any ambition to place it on his own. To him the revolution
was a necessary but unwelcome act of policy. The Swedish nation had none the
less usurped by force rights which it had granted to the Vasa in 1544, but
which in the hands of Sigismund menaced its independence and its religion. This
was revolution; and it was glorious because it defied not merely Sigismund and
his faction, but also the Catholic Reaction in Europe. By his championship of
Protestantism, as in much else, Charles IX connects the work of the first and
of the second Gustavus.
1599-1600] Advent of Charles IX.
In personal character and in domestic government
Charles IX was his father's heir. He showed himself, it is true, more devout
but less virtuous than Gustavus, while in his dealings with men he was more
upright but less adroit. Both Kings were brave, indefatigable, grasping,
suspicious, violent, and practical. In husbanding the national estate, in
frankly taking the people into their counsel, in swiftly overwhelming
opponents, and in pressing to the utmost every royal claim, the founder and the refounder of the Vasa dynasty were alike. Gustavus,
however, was compelled by circumstances to confine himself to endeavors at home
in Sweden; but Charles, on the other hand, played his part on a stage enlarged
by forty years of rivalry with the nations of the north. In an augmented and
less secluded Sweden he practiced anew the principles of his father and thus
rendered possible the achievements of his son.
A severity not less than that which Gustavus had
shown to pretenders was dealt out by Charles to the party of Sigismund. The
victories at Kalmar and in Finland were followed by executions, among them that
of the innocent son of Klas Fleming. These acts of
vengeance foreshadowed the tragedy of the Rad. In February, 1600, when the
Estates met at Linköping, Charles selected 153 of
their number to try thirteen great nobles whom he accused of treason. The
judges, though temporarily released from their allegiance to the Duke, gave
sentence according to his will; and Erik Sparre, Sten and Gustaf Banér, Ture Bielke and Bengt Falk were
beheaded in the market-place. Five years later, after a similar trial at
Stockholm, “the old fox Hogenskild Bielke” shared their fate; and in 1604 the proscription of
lesser men was completed at the Diet of Norrköping.
War of the Swedish Succession. [1600-5
If Charles showed no mercy to traitors, he was
himself pedantically careful of the hereditary right to the Crown. The
deposition of Sigismund was conditional, and more than once a loophole was left
open for the eventual succession of his heir Wladislav.
The Diet of Linköping, however, provided that after
five months' grace the succession should pass to Charles IX, then to Gustavus
Adolphus and his heirs male, and, failing such, to Duke John of Östergötland, Sigismund's half-brother, at that time aged
ten. Yet it was not until four years had elapsed, and John had publicly
renounced his birthright, that Charles consented to Style himself King. His coronation
was deferred until 1607; the Ericsgait, his inaugural progress through the realm, until
1609. Finally, by his will Gustavus Adolphus was not to succeed him unless John
should waive his claims when grown to manhood and the Estates should choose his
cousin King.
As the Blood-bath of Stockholm in 1520 had
removed domestic rivals from the path of Gustavus, so the Blood-bath of Linköping cleared the path of Charles IX. Secure against
faction in Sweden, he was able to fling himself into the struggle with Poland,
which lasted throughout his reign, and the struggle with Denmark, which
threatened at the beginning and broke out at the end. In 1600 Sigismund took
steps to make a national affair of his dynastic quarrel. He ceded Esthonia to Poland, but failed to win more than the passive
acquiescence of the Diet in a war with Sweden at his own risk and cost.
Nevertheless the Poles imprisoned the Swedish envoys; and Charles replied by
invading Livonia with some 9000 men (August, 1600). By March, 1601, he was
master of the lands north of the Düna. The castle of Kokenhausen and the city of Riga barred his progress, but
the Livonians showed signs of sympathy with their
fellow Protestants in the struggle with a Romanist Power. The peril of their
province, however, roused the Poles, and in five campaigns they proved that
they were still the foremost warriors of northern Europe. In 1601 they reconquered Livonia as far north as Wolmar,
where they captured Karl Karlsson Gyllenhielm,
the King's natural son, and Jacob de La Gardie, whose
mother was the natural daughter of John III. So long as the King lived,
Sigismund kept Karl Karlsson in prison, often in
chains, thus provoking a fresh animosity within the House of Vasa.
In the campaigns of 1602,1603, and 1604 Zamoyski
and Chodkievicz made steady progress in recovering and defending the fortresses
which dominated the exhausted plain. They penetrated into Esthonia,
and the Swedes twice failed to retake Weissenstein. In 1605, therefore, after
the unsuccessful general Stalarm had been condemned
for treason, Charles himself resumed the command which he had
laid down after his first successes. He lacked, however, the coolness of a
successful strategist. At Kirkholm, a day's march south-east of Riga, he fell
upon Chodkievicz with a greatly superior force; but his rash generalship
brought upon his army a terrible defeat (September, 1605). The Poles could
boast that the Swedes left upon the field thrice as many dead as Chodkievicz
had men. Barely escaping with his life from a field where some 8000 of his
troops perished, Charles returned to Sweden as hastily as he had come. King and
nation alike faced with courage both the wreck of the army of Livonia and the
prospect that the Russian pretender, known to history as the First False
Demetrius, would as Tsar reward Sigismund with his alliance. Next year, though
the Swedes in Livonia were still too weak to take the aggressive, the death of
Demetrius and Zamoyski paralyzed their opponents, while in Sweden the Catholic Petrus Petrosa planned in vain to
assassinate the King.
It may well be that the greatest dangers which
confronted Charles were due to his own stubborn Calvinism. The Swedish Church,
no longer subservient to the Crown, scouted the King's proposals for even the
smallest modification of its intolerant Lutheran teaching. From 1607-10 Charles
made futile efforts to unite the two communions. By threatening to decline the
Crown he continued to induce the Estates to accept a clause in the Royal
Guarantee of 1604, which provided that the Upsala Resolution and the Augsburg
Confession should be the rule of government only so far as they were founded on
God’s Word in the Scriptures. Now, as in 1593, however, he displayed towards
the Lutherans a statesmanlike restraint which contrasts strongly with his
violence towards the Rad and foreign Powers.
Although war and religious controversy were
raging, the restless energy of Charles found vent in many domestic reforms. In
1600 he took a great step towards the establishment of a provincial standing
army. Next year, as he returned from Livonia, he paused to organize the
government of Finland and to cut down the liberties of the nobles to the level
of those enjoyed by their peers in Sweden. He then journeyed round the shores of
the Gulf of Bothnia, making choice of sites for towns. In May, 1602, he met a
Diet at Stockholm, and struck the keynote of his domestic policy by restoring
the Rad in conformity with the law of the land. This measure, though
conservative, was not reactionary, for a decade of persecution had tamed the
existing generation of high nobles. Thenceforward the Crown possessed in the Rad
a corporation of notables whose services, individual and collective, it could
claim on behalf of the realm.
The struggle in Livonia and
Russia. [1604-11
At the same time the King grappled with the
questions of the codification of the law and the establishment of a supreme
tribunal, both of which projects cost him much toil and brought little
immediate advantage. In 1604 a great Succession Act was framed. This arranged for the
hereditary devolution of the Crown upon both male and female Vasa, while it
took the right of inheritance from all who departed from the established
religion, or married a wife holding any false religion, or married without the
knowledge of the Estates, or accepted another throne. With this Bill of Rights
which, excepting perhaps Charles himself, every successor of Gustavus had
transgressed, was coupled an enactment that no dissidents in matters of
religion should be suffered to dwell or to hold property in Sweden. Only the
firmness of the King saved the followers of Zwingli and Calvin from express
condemnation.
Sweden still lacked anything like an organized
administration, and men competent to govern were rare. Impatient at the dearth
of qualified assistants, Charles made such impracticable proposals as that
every nobleman should forfeit his nobility if he failed to provide his sons
with learning sufficient for their serving the State in office. While the
number of educated nobles was slowly increasing, the main burden of directing
the administration still fell upon the King. Charles promoted manufactures,
regulated commerce, worked minerals, controlled the bailiffs of the Crown,
planned canals, reformed weights and measures, and raised up such abiding
monuments to his memory as Karlstad, Filipstad, Mariestad, and Göteborg.
These manifold contributions to the political
and economic structure of Sweden were made under a cloud of war which did not
lift as the reign advanced. In Livonia Count von Mansfeld gained fortresses when the Poles were absorbed in domestic strife, and lost
them again when Chodkievicz and an adequate force confronted him. As the result
of four campaigns (1607-10) the Swedish power was restored in Esthonia and overthrown further south. In 1611 an armistice
suspended the unprofitable strife. The combatants, however, were still the
allies of conflicting parties in Russia, where a second False Demetrius had
claimed the throne with Polish support. Early in 1609 Charles had concluded at Viborg an eternal alliance with the Tsar Basil against
Sigismund and his successors. Next year, in the hope of gaining the county of Keksholm for Sweden, Jacob de La Gardie led an army of mercenaries to Moscow. Meanwhile Zolkievski was despatched by Sigismund to make Wladislav Tsar.
In June, 1610, he encountered the allies at Klutsjino.
The mercenaries deserted, the Russians fled, de La Gardie and his 400 men capitulated, and the throne of Basil collapsed. In 1611,
according to a treaty between the Poles and Moscow, Wladislav became Tsar. De La Gardie therefore seized Keksholm in March and Novgorod in July, and concluded with
Novgorod a treaty which secured the throne for Gustavus Adolphus or his brother
Charles Philip.
At the moment when the duel between the Vasa
rivals entered upon this new phase, the ambitious young King of Denmark,
Christian IV, at last prevailed on his Estates to sanction a war with Sweden.
The claims of the Vasa to wear the Three Crowns and to exercise rights of sovereignty
over the Lapps in the extreme north of Scandinavia played their wonted part
among the Danish grievances, while the foundation of Göteborg and the Swedish veto upon trade with Riga and Kurland formed more substantial
excuses for war. Thus menaced from two sides, Charles met his Estates at Örebro (November, 1610). He was now worn and aged. Men
complained that he was led by low-born counselors. Twice he had been struck
down by apoplexy, and he was forced to leave Gustavus Adolphus to speak on his
behalf. His spirit, however, was unbroken, and it was his firmness which
induced the reluctant Diet to defy the Danes and to provide for a new army of
25,000 men.
1611] War with Denmark.
Death of Charles IX.
In April, 1611, Christian declared war, and immediately
despatched forces to the mouth of the Göta and to Kalmar. Near Kalmar, which
gives its name to the war, the two Kings confronted each other throughout the
summer months. Gustavus Adolphus, now in the field as well as at home his
father's mainstay, surprised Khristianopel; but the
great fortress of Kalmar was treacherously surrendered to the Danes. In his
rage Charles challenged Christian to single combat, receiving however only
coarse taunts in reply. At the close of the campaign he turned towards his
capital, but died before he reached it (October, 1611).
After playing for more than forty years a
leading part in every crisis of Swedish history, Charles IX left his country
surrounded by peril. In the present struggle Denmark, which had never been more
formidable, was the half-unconscious ally of the Counter-reformation. The “War
of Kalmar” claimed all the energy which Sweden still possessed at a moment when
it seemed that Russia might either become hers or pass to her irreconcilable
foe, Sigismund. The loyalty of the people, moreover, had been strained by the
burden of incessant struggles. The northern provinces were refusing to provide
troops for the invasion of Norway, while the mercenaries plundered a country
which left them short of pay. The nation, indeed, had gained strength since the
Reformation. The Church was now solid, national, and militant, and Sweden was
no longer destitute of industry, commerce, and education. Yet never had she
stood in greater need of a strong King to save her from foreign foes and to
endow her with an organized central administration.
For nearly two months after the death of
Charles, however, the throne remained unfilled, while Queen Christina and Duke
John carried on the government. Then, in December, 1611, the Estates met at Nyköping. In their presence John once more abjured all
claim to the Crown together with the rights of co-regency which the Diet of Norrköping had conferred upon him till Gustavus Adolphus
should reach the age of twenty-four years. He was still ruler of Ostergötland, while Charles Philip received the duchy of Sodermanland by his father's will. In consequence of the
late King's affectionate treatment of Duke John, Gustavus Adolphus was secure
against immediate rivalry from the only one of the Swedish Vasa who might have
been dangerous. The irregularity of the
succession, however, gave the nobles a favorable opportunity for driving a hard
bargain with the Crown. They sought, in the main with success, both security
against such judicial persecutions as Charles IX had practiced, and also a
share in the government proportioned to their social weight. By the Royal
Guarantee of 1611 Gustavus bound himself to confer upon them many great titular
offices and to secure the consent of the Rad and Estates in matters of
legislation, peace, war, and alliance. He undertook to consult the Rad before
ordering new levies of men or money, or convoking the Estates. These
concessions did much to secure complete harmony between King and nation in
confronting the Danish and all other perils.
Gustavus Adolphus. [1611-31
Much too was due to the personality of Gustavus.
Thanks to his father and to the century in which he lived, he was already, at
the age of seventeen years, well versed in humane learning, administration, and
war. Under the tutorship of John Skytte he had
steeped himself in the works of the ancient historians. German was the language
of his mother, and Oxenstierna testifies that “he spoke Latin, Dutch, French
and Italian just as if born to them, understood Spanish, English and Scotch,
and had also a smattering of Polish and Muscovite”. As a Protestant he
inherited a love of the Bible; as a child of the Renaissance, a taste for
music, poesy, and eloquence. He had moreover served a strict apprenticeship in
state-craft. When but nine years of age he began to attend the sessions of the Rad.
At thirteen he heard complaints and received ambassadors. At fifteen he became
Duke of Västmanland, and practically co-regent with
his father. The truce of 1609 between Spain and the Dutch sent a host of
condottieri to the north, and from them he learned the art of Spinola and Maurice of Nassau. Already he showed signs of
that versatile talent for war which was to ripen into perfect mastery, so that
he became equally expert in inventing appliances and organization, in selecting
conscripts and pointing cannon, in heading a troop of horse and in planning a
campaign. What laurels Sweden had gained in 1611 were of his gathering.
In form and feature he was kingly, according to
the heroic type which his people reverenced. He could control his hereditary
choler better than the hereditary impulse to be foremost in every fight. Only
once is it recorded that he played the tyrant. Then, in 1631,a young courtier,
Erik Ralamb, insulted him and fled. Gustavus,
inexorable for nine months, cashiered the father on the ground that he should
have brought up his son better, and confined him to his house until Erik should
return to duty. The connection with Margaret Cabeliau,
who gave birth to Gustaf Gustafsson of Vasaborg in May, 1616, was quite unworthy of the
lover of Ebba Brahe. Yet these rare stains, not
surprising in a Vasa, enhance the glory of his habitual self-mastery.
Like all the members of his House who wore the
crown, Gustavus possessed versatile ability and the ambition to embody it in
some great work. Though as loyal to fact as Gustavus I or
Charles IX, he breathed an atmosphere of idealism, and therefore surpassed them
in power over the hearts of men. The noble generosity of his temperament made
it easy for the sons of the victims of his father’s judicial murders to rally
round his throne. For a moment, so late as 1622, he dreamed that he might
obliterate his disputes with Sigismund in a crusade against the enemies of
their common faith. What was of chief importance to Sweden and to Europe was that
in Gustavus this unique endowment was accompanied by true statesmanship. Though
ardent in pursuing certain lofty aims, the creation of an enduring machine of
government, the enlightenment of his people, the ascendancy of Sweden in the
north, and the defense of Protestantism, he could discern the right moment for
advance, the best path to follow, and the distance which it was safe to travel.
Free from jealousy and suspicion, he could moreover avail himself of the
sagacity and formulating power of Axel Oxenstierna, the great Chancellor whom
he found ready to his hand and in whom he recognized the perfect complement to
himself.
1612-3] Close of the War with DenmarK.
The King's first task was to end the “War of
Kalmar” on honorable terms. Christian, who was enlisting many thousands of
German mercenaries, would not hear of peace, and the winter and summer
campaigns of 1612 witnessed the usual ferocious devastation of border provinces
by both sides. In January, 1612, he was beaten back from the walls of Gullberg, where women shared in the defense and the wife of
the commandant ordered thirty prisoners to be slain. Next month Gustavus, who
bore the chief burden of command, was surprised by Rantzau near Vittsjö, and had an extremely narrow escape from
death. In the winter campaign, none the less, the balance of success inclined
towards the Swedes, but in May it was more than redressed by the loss of
Elfsborg and Gullberg.
The Danes now held the keys of Sweden and were
lords of the Baltic. They threatened a combined march on Jonköping, Christian
from Elfsborg, Rantzau from Kalmar. Gustavus,
however, appealed to the people to repel a foe too strong for the royal arms.
The peasants obeyed, filled the country-side with irregulars, and forced both
invading armies to retreat. Christian next menaced Stockholm by sea, but was
repulsed. Unable to bear further the cost of a war which was unpopular in
Denmark, and fearful that the Dutch might intervene to get rid of the Sound
dues, he accepted the mediation of James I of England. In January, 1613, by the
Peace of Knäred, each side gave up its conquests and
conceded to the other the right to bear the Three Crowns. Sweden renounced her
empty but irritating claims to portions of Christian's dominions. The ancient
mutual freedom from customs duties was restored, and the Swedes, receiving the
right of free passage through the Sound, promised to refrain from impeding
Danish commerce with Livonia and Kurland. Elfsborg, with the other Swedish
posts at the mouth of the Göta, and seven counties in Västergötland, were left in the hands of the Danes as
security for the payment of an indemnity of one million thalers in specie within six
years.
Gustavus thus began his reign by buying off the
Swedish nobles with privileges and the Danish armies with money. The ransom of
Elfsborg, nominally more than six times as high as in 1570, laid a heavy
poll-tax upon the people and forced the King to sacrifice more than 30 per
cent, of his revenue and to coin his plate. This was the prelude to a long series
of imposts; for the new reign, like that of Charles IX, was a period of almost
unceasing war. To the strain which war imposed upon the King and nation was
added that of administration, organization, and social change during the two
decades of Sweden's most rapid domestic development. That the country endured
so much was primarily due to the frank and cordial cooperation between Crown
and people which Gustavus successfully established. Innocent of dynastic
self-seeking, he never feared to take his subjects into his counsel. He
convoked Diets, or smaller conventions, almost every year, and in 1617 gave the
Four Estates (nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants) their first regulations
for meeting. The people responded when the need arose by waiving all privilege,
and placing themselves and their money at the disposal of the Crown.
Progress of the Swedes in
Russia. [1611-7
Gustavus sacrificed much at Knäred that he might be free to devote himself to affairs beyond the Baltic. For the
moment his chief problem was the war with Russia. Firm peace with Poland was
indeed impossible so long as Sigismund persisted in claiming the allegiance of
Sweden. From 1611, however, by a truce which was prolonged until 1617, the two
branches of the House of Vasa had agreed to forego their domestic dissensions
in the hope of profiting by the anarchy of Russia. Sigismund dreamed of
bequeathing the Crowns of Poland, Sweden, and Russia to his sons; while
Gustavus, with perhaps a juster appreciation of
Muscovite national strength, embraced the opportunity of fortifying Sweden by
erecting a firm bulwark at her neighbor’s expense. While the King was struggling
with the Danes, Jacob de La Gardie made Novgorod a
base for the conquest of Ingria. Nöteborg,
which was reputed impregnable, was starved into surrender. Narva and other places also capitulated, and the progress of the Swedish arms was
arrested only by the walls of Pskoff.
The national revival at Moscow in 1613, however,
threatened to destroy the domination of both Swedes and Poles in Russia. “Rather
perish than be severed from Moscow” was the answer of Novgorod when, Gustavus
proposed to convert western Russia into a Swedish Lithuania. Pskoff with some 3000 defenders held out so bravely that
the Swedes hemmed it in with a belt of devastation 20 leagues in breadth.
Without reinforcements and supplies de La Gardie and
his conquests were in peril. Michael Romanoff, the new Tsar, was bent on
becoming lord of Novgorod, and his forces profited by their
vast superiority in numbers to regain Tichvin and Gdoff (Augdow).
The conclusion of peace with Denmark enabled Gustavus
to despatch a new army to Russia. The unruly Scots
and Germans who formed the bulk of it proved, however, so mischievous, that he
might well believe his own presence necessary at the seat of war. In January,
1614, he held a momentous Diet at Orebro. After controverting the charge that he made war to satisfy his martial instincts, he secured the
cooperation of the Estates against Russia and Poland if an honorable peace was
not to be had. One of the gravest defects in the government of Sweden was remedied
by the creation of a Supreme Court, while an Economic Ordinance was directed
against the scandals of purveyance and compulsory posting. Then, rejecting all
counsels and entreaties, the King set out for the East, travelling day and
night along the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. In July de La Gardie crushed the invaders from Moscow at Bronitsi, and in September the King recovered Gdoff by storm. He returned in triumph to Sweden, bringing
with him de La Gardie, whose ascendancy in the East
was not devoid of danger to the Crown.
1614-7] Close of the Russian
War.
Gustavus now aimed at securing what the Swedish
arms had won, but despite her internal distractions the barbaric pride of
Russia long impeded the conclusion of peace. In 1615 Evert Horn, the successor
of de La Gardie, fell before Pskoff,
and the King returned to undertake the siege in person. After three months,
however, he was glad to accept once more the good offices of England, a Power
whose interest it was to dissuade her commercial protégé, Russia, from
self-destruction.
At last, by accepting the mediation of his new
allies, the Dutch, and by threatening to make common cause with Sigismund, he
extorted the Peace of Stolbova from the Tsar
(February, 1617). By surrendering Novgorod and recognizing Michael Romanoff,
the Swedes gained the fortress and country of Keksholm,
north-western Ingria, the renunciation of the Russian
pretensions to Esthonia and Livonia, mutual freedom
of trade between Russia and Sweden, and an indemnity of 20,000 roubles. Finland, whose administration had been reorganized
by the King in the winter and spring of 1615-6, now stretched along the shores
of the northern half of Lake Ladoga, while the fortress of Nöteborg secured her against invasion. It seemed that the Swedish Empire had acquired a
durable natural frontier against a neighbor whose potential greatness her King,
like his grandfather, perceived. Without her approval, as Gustavus boasted,
Russia could not launch a boat upon the Baltic. He exhorted the Swedish gentry
to take up estates in Ingria, and the burghers to
profit by the opening of Russia to their wares. Embassy after embassy was
despatched to keep the Russian Court in good humor and the Russian grain-market
open to the Swedish armies. Gustavus even helped to instruct and recruit the
forces of the Tsar. He hoped that the Power bridled at Stolbova might be a helpful ally in the war with Poland
which now broke out anew.
The Polish War of
Gustavus Adolphus. [1617-20
The War of Succession between the two branches
of the House of Vasa fills a great space in the history of Sweden and of Poland
during sixty years (1600-60). That part of it (1617-29), however, which falls
within the reign of Gustavus is specially conspicuous in the general history of
Europe. It may be described as that portion of the Thirty Years’ War which
rendered possible the Swedish intervention in Germany. From its outbreak
Gustavus was consciously taking part in the great struggle of Protestantism
against the Catholic Reaction. Sigismund, who had become closely associated
with the throne of Habsburg by his marriage with the Archduchess Anna in 1592,
was determined to purge Livonia of heresy and to restore Sweden to Rome.
Dynastic necessity no less than personal conviction therefore made Gustavus the
champion of the faith which in three generations had become the symbol of
Swedish national freedom. At Örebro, early in 1617,
he armed himself with a fiercely intolerant statute which decreed that every
Romanist must quit the realm on penalty of forfeiture and death, a doom in
which three of the four Estates would gladly have included Calvinists.
The fact that he was menaced by a
Jesuit-Habsburg crusade rather than by a single crowned litigant compelled him
to look beyond Poland for the disease and beyond Sweden for the remedy.
Aggression, he believed, constituted the best defense for Sweden, and he hoped
by aggression to gain provinces. But whatever its issue, the struggle was
inevitable and the nature of the enemy made the interests of Sweden and of
Protestantism identical. Sweden hoped to gain the alliance of Brandenburg, and
to cement it by the King's marriage. Skytte discussed
with James I the plan of a great evangelical alliance, and labored to convince
the Dutch that his master was fighting their battle against Poland and Spain.
Count Palatine John Casimir of Zweibrücken, the
brother-in-law and assistant of the King, dwelt on the same theme in the
Protestant Courts of Germany. The old Scandinavian discords, however, had left
a great hindrance in the way of Protestant union. Denmark was still the jealous
rival of Sweden rather than a sister Protestant Power. Until 1619 Elfsborg
remained in Danish hands. Then Gustavus met Christian at Halmstad and strove by personal influence to avert the danger to Sweden and to the
Protestant cause. It was not until 1628, however, when the Danish forces had
been crushed by Tilly and Wallenstein, that Sweden
dared to devote the bulk of her strength to war beyond the Baltic. It was in
the Polish struggle of 1617-29 moreover that the Swedes first gained great
military skill and reputation. Hitherto the armies of their Vasa Kings had
gained few victories on land except against the Russians, and for some years
they showed no marked superiority to the Poles. The victory of Wallhof in 1626 is the Fehrbellin or Rocroy of Sweden.
1617-25] Capture of Riga,
and Truce with Poland.
In 1617 and 1618, while Poland was still at war
with Russia, the Swedes devastated parts of Livonia and captured Pernau. Sigismund then made a truce of fourteen years with
Russia and of three years with Sweden, but became embroiled in a disastrous
struggle with the Turks. Gustavus, having vainly offered to purchase peace by
restoring the conquests made by Sweden since 1600, assembled a large army and
strove to heighten its discipline, regimental esprit de corps, and even piety,
by issuing his famous Articles of War. In July, 1621, he left Sweden with 158
ships and besieged Riga with 19,000 men. The great German city, free, populous,
and Protestant, held out bravely for five weeks, and then experienced the usual
politic clemency of her conqueror. Gustavus, whose exploit made him famous in
Europe, is styled Magnus on the medal which commemorates his success. He
designed to make Riga the corner-stone of a new Swedish province in Livonia and
Kurland. Prince Radzivil, however, now stronger by
reason of the close of the Turkish war, regained what Gustavus had conquered
after the fall of Riga, and the King's army was too ill-found to win it back.
In August, 1622, a truce was negotiated which endured for three years.
During this breathing-space, the last which
Gustavus was destined to enjoy, Sweden did not put off her armour. The position
in Livonia was such as to afford no hope of a settlement without a renewal of
strife. The inflexibility of Sigismund was not weakened by the triumphs of his
allies in Germany, Pernau and Riga, too, could not
well remain politically separate from the province whose janitors they were. In
July, 1623, the rumor that a Polish armada was preparing against him brought
Gustavus in haste to Danzig with twenty warships. While Sigismund and his Court
feasted on shore, the Swedes extorted from the city an undertaking to respect
the truce, and even demanded a pledge of permanent neutrality. Next year, in
consequence of her violation of the free commercial intercourse provided for by
the Treaty of Knäred, Sweden stood for a moment on
the verge of war with Denmark. When this danger passed, Gustavus and Christian,
as is related elsewhere, became competitors for the leadership of the
Protestant expedition into Germany. Thus, when the Truce with Sigismund
expired, Gustavus stood at the head of an army which for eight years had been
either fighting or awaiting the signal to fight, and in which feudalism had
been giving place to a centralized national organization.
In these years too the
hold of Gustavus upon his people had grown even stronger than before. The
circle of the Swedish Vasa had contracted until only its centre remained. Duke
John died in 1618, Catharine Stenbock, Dowager of
Gustavus I, in 1621, and Christina, Dowager of Charles IX, in 1625. Above all,
in 1622, the King's younger brother, Charles Philip, fell in the Livonian war.
Their appanages escheated to the Crown, and the
danger from the duchies was at an end; but the succession was insecure. In 1620
the King had married Maria Eleonora,
sister of the Elector George William of Brandenburg; but they were as yet
without an heir. More than ever, the destiny of Sweden hung upon the life of
the King.
Gustavus Adolphus’ home government. [1621-32
Throughout his reign Gustavus Adolphus responded
to every national need. He possessed neither the necessary authority for
autocratic reform, nor was this part of his ambition. The monarchy of Sweden,
it is true, was still in great part patriarchal, and her administration rude.
While the King made incessant journeys through his dominions, the seat of
government moved with him. While he was at the head of his army over-seas,
during almost one-half of the years 1621-32, the administration was carried on
by a small committee of the Had, nominated, limited and instructed by himself.
The Diet, though gaining power at the expense of the provincial assemblies, had
hardly attained to the stage of definition reached by the English Parliament at
the accession of Edward I. The Rad, although the course of events tended to
make it the centre of the government, was as yet rather an aggregate of active
grandees than a permanent cabinet council. The competence of the several organs
of administration was determined in great measure by the personality of their
respective chiefs. When the King is found applying in vain to Upsala for a
qualified diplomatic clerk, it is not surprising that Axel Oxenstierna could
invest the Chancery, the writing-office of the Crown, with something of his own
eminence, that Jacob de La Gardie could shape the
administration of the army, or Gustavus himself fashion the Supreme Court to
his own design.
But the rudimentary organization of the State
did not imply the autocracy of the King. Besides the limitations upon his power
imposed by his concessions to the nobles and those inevitably attendant on the
rule of law which he was building up, Gustavus had to reckon with the
conservatism of the clergy. In 1623 he made the chief of a series of efforts to
achieve a reform which lay very near his heart-the establishment of an orderly
central authority in the Swedish Church. He proposed to create a General
Ecclesiastical Consistory composed of six clerical and six civil officials, and
to charge it with the oversight not only of worship, doctrine, and discipliné, but
also of education, charitable foundations, and the press. Negotiations
continued for more than a year, but the King was unable to overcome the
stubborn resistance of the clergy to the intrusion of laymen, and he failed to
accomplish his design.
In inspiring his lieutenants, however, and in
removing the friction and inertia which had hitherto retarded social and
constitutional progress, Gustavus rendered priceless services to Sweden. The
definition of rights and duties and the centralization of government, which
were of necessity abiding aims of his policy, found notable expression in the
foundation of the House of Nobles soon after the Polish Truce had ended. It had
long been a grievance of the Vasa that noble status with its freedom from
ordinary taxation was often usurped by their subjects without license from the
Crown. In June, 1626, Gustavus authorized the building of the Riddarhus, a hall of meeting in the capital for those
enrolled as noble, and thereby stereotyped into a hierarchic corporation those
Swedes who could vindicate their claims to nobility or who might thereafter be
ennobled by the King. The chief of the four Orders of the Diet thus received
the definition and organization which had been repudiated by the Church. Reform
could, however, claim only the intervals in strife. Apart from the peril to the
King's own person, to which alone the political vision of Gustavus was always
blind, all the interests of Sweden dictated the renewal of the war with Poland
in 1625. An attack upon Livonia would paralyze Sigismund and divide the enemies
of the Protestant cause, while its conquest would give Sweden a new province
and a bastion on the side of Poland. To confuse the enemy a; triple attack was
devised. Gyllenhielm with a small force was to
descend upon Windau, while de La Gardie and Gustaf Horn with the army of the Baltic Provinces
laid siege to Dorpat, and the King and John Banér employed the mercenaries in the neighborhood of Riga.
The Swedes were everywhere successful. Within three months almost all Livonia
was theirs. While the German burghers of Dorpat were
rejoicing at the advent of Protestants, Gustavus was capturing the strong
places of Kurland, together with Birze, the border
fortress of Lithuania. Too far-seeing to attempt the conquest of a Romanist
people, he hoped that the suffering Lithuanians might influence Sigismund to
make peace.
1625-6] Renewal of war with
Poland.
At this point, however, the Swedes received a
check. A Polish force under Gonsievski drove Horn
from the south-east of Livonia. Two armies, with Radzivil and the distinguished statesman Leo Sapieha in
command, confronted Gustavus in Kurland. At the end of November the King wrote
to Oxenstierna from Berson, “Hunger and cold have
driven us hither. I have seen more misery on the way than ever before in my
fifteen years of war”. All through December he worked incessantly to avert
starvation. On January 7, 1626, however, a brilliant feat of arms determined
the issue of the war. At Wallhof, fighting against
odds of perhaps five to one, Gustavus crushed Sapieha's army almost without loss to his own. He then returned to Sweden, leaving
Livonia to await peace and to regain strength under a separate and liberal
administration, to which the University of Dorpat,
founded in 1630, still bears witness.
The campaigns of 1625 had proved how valuable to the Swedes were the resolute strategy of Gustavus and the reforms introduced by him into their discipline and tactics. In 1626 he sought to reap a still richer harvest in Prussia. East Prussia was a fief of the Polish Crown, ruled by Queen Maria Eleonora’s brother, the Elector George William of Brandenburg. West Prussia, in many respects a second Livonia, might afford Gustavus abundant supplies and a theatre of war convenient for observing the struggle in Germany and for compelling Sigismund to make peace. At the end of June, 1626, the Swedes, some 14,000 strong, descended upon both provinces of Prussia. Gustavus ridiculed the idea that Brandenburg could stand aside while the existence of Protestantism was at stake. Pillau, the port of Königsberg, had 28 feet of water, and he seized it as a naval base. By also blockading Danzig, where a great Protestant community, careless of all interests save its own, grew rich upon the commerce of the Vistula, he was able to lay hands upon the customs dues of all Prussia and to make the war in a great measure self-supporting. Having thus secured access to the mainland, Gustavus nest endeavored to conquer the Polish littoral. His success was swift and far-reaching. Danzig alone proved obstinate.
In Catholic Ermeland as well
as in West Prussia the towns opened their gates. Both provinces were reorganized
as dominions of Sweden, retaining their privileges but paying heavy taxes for
the war. Here, as wherever the Swedes triumphed, the Jesuits were expelled and
a Lutheran organization introduced. He then occupied the district to the west
of the Vistula and hemmed in Danzig by land and sea. Two months elapsed before
Sigismund was able to dispute his progress. A futile attempt to recover Mewe on the Vistula was a fresh demonstration of the
inferiority of the Polish troops. Encouraged by the news from Germany, however,
Sigismund offered impossible terms of peace. In October, having committed the
administration to Oxenstierna and the army to Wrangel,
Gustavus returned to Sweden. On December 8 his daughter Christina was born.
Although the Polish War had still more than
three years to run, its main results were now achieved. Henceforward the Swedes
were hindered by the wounds and sickness of their King and by the stubborn valour of, Danzig rather than by Sigismund and his army. On
the other hand cold, hunger, and sickness cost them thousands of lives. Prussia
was stripped bare, and the vast extent of Poland made it impossible for them to
strike the decisive blow.
At the same time, the downfall of Christian IV
and of the Protestant power in Germany brought into closer connection the
eastern and the western wars. In 1627 one of Wallenstein's regiments joined the
army of Sigismund. The Elector of Brandenburg, after long hesitation, took
sides for a moment with his overlord, only to suffer fresh humiliations when
half his force deserted to Gustavus and he lost Marienwerder and Memel. Before the campaign of 1628 opened, the King's plan for an offensive
war of defense against the Habsburgs had received the assent of a secret
committee of the four Estates. Sweden became the ally of Denmark and assisted
in the defence of Stralsund.
1614-3o] Truce with Poland.
Gustavus' economic policy.
Gustavus now commanded more than 30,000 men; but
until February, 1629, the Poles gained the fruits of victory by avoiding
battle. Then, near Gurzno, Wrangel shattered an army of some 6000 men under Potocki. He
lost no more than 90 men, but was compelled to retreat from
the walls of Thorn. In the summer the presence of Arnim with 10,000 Imperialist troops recalled Gustavus to the war. The Swedes were
surprised at Stuhm, where the King had a hair-breadth
escape from death or capture; but they made good their retreat to Marienburg. At last his own ill-health, the exhaustion of
his dominions, and the danger from Habsburg designs on Prussia overcame the
obstinacy of Sigismund. Charnacé, the envoy of
Richelieu, took the lead in mediation, and on September 26, 1629, a six years’
truce was signed at Altmark. On condition of
surrendering the remainder of her conquests Sweden gained the tranquil
possession of Livonia and a great part of the coast of Prussia, including Braunsberg, Elbing, Pillau, and Memel. George William received Marienburg and other compensation in West Prussia. The
Swedes secured freedom of worship for the Protestants whom they surrendered to
Poland, and --a boon surpassed only by that of relief from the Polish War-- they
acquired financial support for the war in Germany, since the customs dues,
which in 1629 exceeded half a million riksdaler, were left in their hands.
The reign of Gustavus after the Truce of Altmark forms an integral part of the Thirty Years’ War.
His embarkation in 1630 with an army entirely equipped at home commemorates,
however, the industrial and commercial progress which had formed a constant
ideal of his rule. “The King's Majesty”, said Oxenstierna, “controls and steers
mines, commerce, manufactures, and customs just as a steersman steers his ship”.
Gustavus indeed spared no effort to further mining and metal-working under the
strict control of the Crown. In order to concentrate commerce and manufactures
within the towns, he increased their number, conferred privileges upon them,
and protected them by law against the competition of the country districts. In
1614 trade with foreigners was confined to thirteen staple towns, while the
market towns received a monopoly of trade between Swedish subjects.
The principle that industry and commerce should
be controlled by the Crown permeated the economic policy of Sweden. The King
embraced with enthusiasm the plan of a South Sea trading Company. Industries
were committed to the rule of guilds. The monopoly of trade with foreign lands,
first in copper, then in iron, corn, and salt, was granted to chartered
companies. All these experiments were made when Sweden was perpetually at war
and when the financial burden of war could not be thrown upon the future.
Although much of the economic policy of Gustavus was unsuccessful, Sweden
became eminent in the industries necessary to war, her internal communications
were improved, and fifteen new towns were established by the King. Four great free
schools, in Västeras, Strängnäs, Linköping, and Abo, were of his creation, and in 1624
he endowed the University of Upsala with more than three hundred manors,
comprising almost the whole of his private estates. The twenty years of his
reign were a time of constitutional advance,
of profitable conquest, of military organization, and of the growth of a
richer, more harmonious, and nobler national life.
The rule of Sigismund in Poland. [1589-1605
The glory of Gustavus is enhanced by contrast
with the reaction and decadence which characterize the first five-and-forty
years of Vasa sovereignty in Poland. For a century after Sigismund’s accession,
indeed, the Polish magnates continued to be famous for magnificence, valor, and
freedom. They believed that their constitution secured the Polish nation in the
enjoyment of the fairest fruits of the three great principles of government:
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Yet the reign of Sigismund is but the
beginning of the long chastisement brought upon the Poles by the arrogant
individualism which had dictated the establishment of a weak elective monarchy
in 1573, and which was destined in two centuries to dissolve the State. A
vassal of the Church, a stranger both to self-interest and patriotism,
Sigismund derived in great part his domestic policy from the Jesuits and his
foreign policy from the Habsburgs. In 1589 and 1590, he left to his subjects
the defense of the Polish frontiers against the Tartars and the Turks; and a
decade later the Poles in their turn refused to concern themselves with the
recovery of his Swedish throne. Disunion between King and people is the chief
characteristic of Polish history in a reign far from inglorious in war. The
Habsburgs gladly embraced the opportunity to make the realm of Sigismund their
bulwark against the tumultuous forces of the East. In 1595 Poland declined the
invitation of Pope and Emperor to a crusade; but Zamoyski conquered Moldavia at
his own expense. At the same time Zolkievski purged
the Ukraine of its Cossack invaders. In 1597 Polish suzerainty over Moldavia
was recognized by the Sultan, and two years later the Hospodar of Wallachia menaced the province to no purpose. To these victories of the
Republic must be added the overthrow of the Swedes in Livonia. After the crowning
triumph of Kirkholm (1605) Zamoyski declared that it was disgraceful to
struggle so long with so petty a foe ; but again the discrepancy between the
interest of Sigismund and that of the nation proved injurious to both. At this
crisis of the whole reign, Zamoyski, addressing the Diet for the last time,
charged the King to his face with having misappropriated the taxes, left the
troops unpaid, neglected the fortifications, retained the foreign guards,
planned the coronation of his son, and betrayed the interests of the kingdom by
his patronage of the Russian Pretender and by his close alliance with the House
of Austria. The death of Zamoyski, however, facilitated the King's marriage
(1605) with Constantia, the sister of his former Queen, a union which his
subjects regarded both as an act of treason against the Republic and as an
insult to Heaven.
Sigismund's second marriage consolidated into a
single force the several elements of hostility to the Crown which had sprung up
during eighteen years of misrule. With the tacit consent both of the King and
of the Senate, which was full of his creatures, the Jesuits and the mob had
reduced religious toleration to a shadow. The Protestants were excluded from
office, restricted in education, deprived of their churches, and exposed to
outrage at the hands of the Romanist populace. The Greeks in Lithuania suffered
most from Latin aggression. The Union of Brzesc in
1595, by which six Orthodox prelates joined the Roman communion, proved only a
new source of fanatic violence and civil strife. It thus became possible after
the death of the patriot Zamoyski for personal enemies of the King to rally
60,000 men in support of the Rokosz (Grand Remonstrance) of Sandomir (1606). Sigismund showed statesmanlike moderation in his efforts to meet this
indictment and to avert civil war. Owing, however, to the obstinacy of the
Palatine of Cracow, the Chancellor of Lithuania, an interregnum was proclaimed
by the rebels in 1607, and it was doubtful how far the royal troops could be
trusted to put them down. Many of the insurgents, on the other hand, listened
to counsels of moderation, and an accident contributed to save the Crown. At Guzov a sudden panic seized the divided and dwindling army
of the Rokosz, and the King's clemency finally
extinguished the movement. Thenceforward, though the power of the nobles
remained unbroken, that of the Protestant party was at an end, and the
influence of the Jesuits even greater than before.
The suppression of the Rokosz was the last enduring
triumph of a reign which had still a quarter of a century to run. Some of the
Polish nobles, it is true, had secured the coronation of Demetrius at Moscow in
1605, and five years later Sigismund was to enjoy the brief elevation of his
son Wladislav to the throne of the Tsars. In 1619,
however, when at Diviline the Republic accepted
Smolensk and Sievierz from the Romanoffs as the price of a truce for fourteen years, the dream of a Polish Tsar had
vanished.
All that Sigismund hoped from the Habsburgs and
from the Polish nobles greedy for office in Livonia and Esthonia likewise vanished, but at a far greater sacrifice, by the truce of 1629. His
support of the Imperial cause in the Great War brought him trouble not only
from Bethlen Gabor, but also from the Polish Diet of
1624, which compelled him to forbid his subjects to serve in foreign armies.
The Turks, too, were able to turn the balance of success in their own favor. In
1612 they recovered Moldavia; and the efforts of the Poles to restore their
suzerainty culminated in 1620 with a terrible disaster near Cécora. Zolkievski was killed and Koniecpolski captured; and next year the heroism of the dying Chodkievicz in defending Choczim was rewarded only by the concession that the
Turkish Governor of Moldavia should be a Christian. All these disasters,
together with the burning of the rich town of Jaroslav in 1625, and the annihilation of his fleet during the war with Gustavus,
Sigismund bore with the tenacious equanimity which was, perhaps, the most
notable feature of his character, and the most disastrous to Poland.
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