Gustavus III of Sweden

“ Supported by England with a subsidy for one year of £1,200,000, and the assurance of auxiliary troops, Sweden presented a bold front. A Russian army overran Finland; but Gustavus quarrelled with Sir John Moore, who had come to his assistance with 10,000 English troops; he forbade their landing, and the English general returned home in disgust. With more than 100,000 Swedes under arms, Gustavus managed never to have 10,000 together ”

“ The Swedish fleet was too weak for that; it would be safer to take and fortify the pick of them. In Germany itself, if he once got the upper hand, he would not find himself without resources. It is no enthusiastic crusader, but an anxious and farseeing if somewhat speculative statesman who thus opens his mind to us. No doubt religious considerations largely influenced Gustavus. He had the deepest sympathy for his fellow-Protestants in Germany; he regarded them as God’s peculiar people, himself as their divinely appointed deliverer. But his first duty was to Sweden ”

“ The tale of his cruelty and treacheries belongs rather to the history of Sweden than of Gustavus. Enough to say (p. 156) that, having by promises of peace and pardon got all the leading Swedes into his power, he had them murdered, and then he and his soldiers went on slaying the common people right and left in mere wanton savagery. All the surviving nobles were in his pay; the least suspicion of an uprising was crushed with an iron hand, the least murmur of discontent brought death. Never had Sweden seemed more helpless in the power of the Danes. ”

“ Dalarne had become the only spot in Sweden where liberty still lived, and thither all liberty-loving Swedes whose hands were not yet tied repaired. Whenever these recruits appeared, Gustavus placed them in the midst of his little army, and called upon them to declare what they had seen of Christiern's deeds. It makes a striking picture, this little band of patriots, in a far-off mountain region in the dead of winter, with no arms but their picks and axes, strong only in their high resolve, and yet breathing defiance against the whole army of the Danish king. ”

“ In Denmark, Christian’s reign came to an end. With his usual violence he attacked the nobles and the ecclesiastics in order to better the conditions of the peasants, for whom he had a tender sympathy. In so doing, he brought the nobles to open revolt against his rule. He left his throne in April, 1523. Now Gustavus found the opportune moment to accept the Swedish crown offered him. He called a Riksdag at Strengnæs, in June, 1523, where Gustavus was chosen king of Sweden “by the councillors of state with the consent of the common people.” ”

“ The reformation now made rapid progress in Sweden; and at a national council held at Örebro in 1529 Lutheranism was adopted as the state religion. Having thus, as he said, “conquered his kingdom a second time,” Gustavus formed an alliance with Frederick I. of Denmark against the deposed Christian II., who, having secured the assistance of the emperor Charles V., entered Norway with an army in 1531, and was joined by a number of Swedish malcontents. The troops of Gustavus and Frederick soon forced him to surrender, and the ex-king passed the rest of his life in confinement. ”

“ He led his men against one fortress after another. There were long sieges and terrible battles; but Gustavus proved himself as great a general as he was a man; and two years later, in 1525, Stockholm, the last town remaining to the Danes in Sweden, surrendered to his army. Christian himself had been unable to leave Denmark, but he was in constant communication with his lieutenants, and wild was his rage at the continued success of his young opponent. Gustavus's mother and sister, with many other Swedish ladies, had fallen into the king's hands at the time of those wholesale murders ”

“ We, with our small philosophy, can make allowance for the greater dangers of the higher sphere; and shall we arrogate to ourselves a larger judgment and ampler sympathies than we allow to God? Yet Gustavus was happy. Among soldiers and statesmen, if there is a greater, there is hardly a purer name. He had won not only honour but love, and the friend and comrade was as much bewailed as the deliverer and the king. In him his Sweden appeared for the first and last time with true glory on the scene of universal history. ”

“ Sweden in the early part of the sixteenth century was not fertile in literary men. Gustavus himself, judged by any rational standard, was an abominable writer. His despatches are in number almost endless and in length appalling. Page after page he runs on, seemingly with no other object than to use up time. Often a document covers four folios, which might easily have been compressed into a single sentence. Such was the habit of the age. A simple letter from a man to his wife consisted mainly of a mass of stereotyped expressions of respect. ”

“ The most influential yeomen of all the parishes in the eastern and western dales elected Gustavus to be "lord and chieftain over them and the commons of the realm of Sweden." Some scholars who had arrived from Westeras brought with [Pg 80] them new accounts of the tyranny of Christian. Gustavus placed them amid a ring of peasants to tell their story and answer the questions of the crowd. Old men represented it as a comfortable sign for the people, that as often as Gustavus discoursed to them the north wind always blew, "which was an old token to them that God would grant them good success." ”

“ He was in every particular a child of his time, and every inch a king. Gustavus was decidedly French in education, taste and superficiality, but had by his first teacher Dalin been inspired with a deep love of his country, its history, language and traditions. He handled the Swedish and French languages with equal skill, and a more eloquent monarch has never graced a throne. He was passionately fond of theatricals and impressive ceremony, and, like his mother and illustrious uncle, he surrounded himself with men of genius. ”

“ Gustavus had left no male heir to the crown of Sweden: his daughter Christina, then six years old, was the natural heir. The unavoidable weakness of a regency, suited ill with that energy and resolution, which Sweden would be called upon to display in this trying conjuncture. The wide reaching mind of Gustavus Adolphus had raised this unimportant, and hitherto unknown kingdom, to a rank among the powers of Europe, which it could not retain without the fortune and genius of its author, and from which it could not recede, without a humiliating confession of weakness. ”

“ Thus the Reformation in Sweden was practically the work of one strong man, acting (first from purely political and latterly from purely economical reasons) for the good of the state as he understood it. In this Gustavus acted contrary to the religious instincts of the vast majority of the Swedish nation; for there can be no doubt at all that the Swedes at the beginning of the 16th century were not only still devoted to the old Church, but violently anti-Protestant. This popular Romanism was the greatest of all Gustavus's difficulties, because it tended to alienate the Swedish peasants. ”

“ Nobody seems to have even suspected at the time that serious mental derangement lay at the root of Gustavus’s abnormal piety. On the contrary, there were many who prematurely congratulated themselves on the fact that Sweden had now no disturbing genius, but an economical, God-fearing, commonplace monarch to deal with. Gustavus’s prompt dismissal of the generally detested Gustaf Reuterholm added still further to his popularity. ”

“ The scheme, however, failed; for Pope Adrian died before he had had time to act, and was succeeded by a pontiff who hated everything which savored of reform.
During the first months of his reign Gustavus was made wretched by the importunate demands of Lubeck. Her ambassadors continually dogged his steps, and declared they would not leave him till every cent that Sweden owed was paid. After the fall of Kalmar the monarch needed his foreign mercenaries no longer, and would gladly have cashiered them and sent them off. ”

“ The powers which Gustavus possessed as regent were too vague to meet the necessities of a time of peace. While the army was in the field, he had authority, as commander of the forces, to levy the taxes necessary to sustain his men; but, so soon as the war was over, there would be no means for raising the money needed to pay the nation's debts. He therefore, shortly before the fall of Kalmar, summoned a general diet to be held at Strengnäs on the 27th of May. Whether or not all the magnates of Sweden were summoned to the diet is not known, but at any rate the peasantry were represented. ”

“ Sweden was conquered by Christian in 1520, and in the same year, having taken Stockholm, he ordered there the massacre of the nobility, known as the "Blood-bath." Ninety of the leading men of Sweden, including the father of Gustavus, were put to death. This outrage provoked an uprising, in which the province of Dalecarlia bore the leading part, and its people followed Gustavus in a movement for independence. He soon gathered an army of his adherents, called "Dalesmen"—men of the dales—strong enough to meet the enemy. ”

“ Thereupon the Dane said: “A people who eat wood and drink water, the devil himself cannot subdue,” much less any other. The Swedes at first were poorly armed, but with bows and arrows, axes, and clubs, used with an intense love of Gustavus and country, they repeatedly defeated the Danes, who, after two years’ hard fighting, were driven out of Sweden. On Midsummer’s Eve, June 23, 1523, Gustavus made a triumphant entry into Stockholm as King. He reigned for thirty years. His memory is fresh to-day in Sweden as the liberator of the country from the Danish yoke. ”

“ Even to the bold Chancellor Oxenstiern, an offensive war appeared too daring a measure; the resources of his poor and conscientious master, appeared to him too slender to compete with those of a despotic sovereign, who held all Germany at his command. But the minister's timid scruples were overruled by the hero's penetrating prudence. "If we await the enemy in Sweden," said Gustavus, "in the event of a defeat every thing would be lost, by a fortunate commencement in Germany everything would be gained. The sea is wide, and we have a long line of coast in Sweden to defend. ”

“ Sigismund represented the Catholic element; Gustavus was the most prominent Protestant prince, and as such received many urgent petitions for help from the harassed Protestants of Germany. The eventual necessity of taking a share in the religious war was clearly foreseen by Sweden. With the advice and consent of the ministry and115 people, Gustavus reorganized the army and created a distinctly national force of eighty thousand men, and based its discipline and character on the most intelligent foundation. Sweden thus acquired the first modern regular military organization. ”

“ Under Gustavus' influence the mines of the north became vast sources of wealth; manufactures grew up everywhere, and commerce was fostered by treaties with England, France, Denmark, and Russia. Before his death, which took place on Michaelmas Day, 1560, he had raised Sweden to a condition of unexampled prosperity, and had prepared the way for the great epoch of the next century.
We now return to the Swedish Church. Although the Ordinances of Vesteräs had shorn it of its grandeur and delivered it into Gustavus' hands, they had not abolished its essential character. ”

“ The “hats” and the “caps” were heard of no more, and Sweden seemed to be in a fair way of entering upon a new era of greatness and prosperity.
Tempting as the task may be for the historian to go into the details of the life of the extraordinary man who, endowed by nature with talents of a high order, rose to the heights of human glory and then abruptly fell by reason of his own folly, we must forego this pleasure and confine ourselves to a rapid sketch of the events{264} which led Gustavus the Third slowly to the terrible tragedy of his assassination. ”

“ Gustavus, who at the time of his father's death was travelling on the continent, procured from the French government a promise of aid and support against the aristocratic party. Hastening to Sweden, he labored to obtain popularity, while his emissaries propagated disaffection to the diet. Having matured his scheme, Gustavus confided the secret to a favorite officer, Hellichius, who shut the city gates of Christianstad, and published a manifesto against the diet. The place was immediately invested by government troops, while Stockholm was declared under martial law. ”

“ And at whose feet, when Heaven his toils repaid,
His brightest wreaths the grateful Hero laid.
Many have attributed the efforts which Gustavus made use of to deliver his country, to ambition, and a desire of reigning. Yet, since his elevation produced much good to Sweden, and no evil, it is surely allowable, if not just, to attribute them to a purer motive: at any rate, a poet is at liberty to set his hero's character in the fairest light he can, consistently with history. ”

“ Finland was lost and Sweden proper in danger.
Only a revolution could save the country. The republican aristocrats were the ones to bring it about. A conspiracy among them was formed, George Adlersparre and Ch. H. Anckarsverd being the leaders. When it was rumored that the former, with the western army division, of which he was the commander, had left the Norwegian frontier and was marching on Stockholm, Gustavus IV. sent order to Toll in Scania to meet him with his troops, while the king seemed to make preparations to leave. ”