Gustav, now fully alarmed, recruited a peasant army from Gästrikland, Hälsingland, Uppland and even Finland. He received additional troops for his Danish contingent and mobilized the nobility’s heavy cavalry. He spent large sums of money to import German mercenaries. By late summer he was ready and sent his army into the rebellious province.
The lead element of this army, some 1,000 to 1,500 German mercenaries, crossed the border from Östergötland into Småland and were immediately attacked at Slatmon near the town of Kisa. Nils’ men surrounded and cut them off by felling trees in front and behind. Gustav’s advanced corps was annihilated. The few who escaped straggled back into Linköping on September 15. Nils, with an estimated 14,000 men, then drove into Östergötland and holed up only three miles from Linköping where Gustav was camped. The rebel army was also within reach of the great forests of Kolmarden only 30 miles away. These forests are on the border of Södermanland and stretch to within striking distance of Stockholm. Gustav seems to have feared the possibility of Nils getting to this forest more than the danger to his own army or even his own safety.
Småland was lost and Östergötland hung by a thread. Gustav had no choice but to sue for peace. By the terms of the treaty, Nils pledged fealty to Gustav and the king promised to send agents to investigate the complaints of oppressive taxes and corrupt bailiffs. Nils would withdraw his forces back into Småland, but would be left to govern the province as he saw fit.
At one point the throne or governorship was offered to Svante Sture, but he turned it down. Again, Svante Sture and his mother remained loyal to Gustav throughout the rebellion. So Nils set himself up as ruler of Småland. In late 1542 he took over the royal castle of Kronoberg situated on an island in Lake Helgasjön some four miles from Växjö. With a garrison of a thousand men, he made this his capital of Småland. On November 25 he called a provincial assembly at Växjö declaring his rule. The terms of the armistice were to be strictly obeyed and the pillaging of noble estates was to cease. He appointed his own bailiffs in each district to enforce his rule, and maintain law and order. Local leaders were called to hold assemblies in each county, establish local control and make new laws.
The Catholic faith was restored as the church of the realm. Once more, Mass would be celebrated by priests, some of whom, not willing to take up the new religion, had been forced from their parish churches to become wandering vagrants. The familiar Latin verse and song were heard again by the faithful country people. What could not be restored were the gold service pieces, silver candlesticks, church ornaments and decorations. These now resided in Gustav’s treasure vaults.
And finally, he rectified the financial situation, canceling royal fines and lowering the tax burden. He opened the border so Småland could again reach the markets of Blekinge and Haland where access was easier and prices higher. Through the late fall and winter of 1542–43, it was indeed a return to the good old days for the people of Småland.
Nils’ insurrection caused a great excitement in Germany. The anti–Gustav party was sure this was their chance to retake Sweden. Gustav’s former general and later avowed enemy Berend von Melen, Duke Albrekt of Mecklenberg and Count Friedrich of Palatinate offered support in exchange for money or political considerations. Even the emperor, Charles V, issued a proclamation calling upon the Swedish people to rise up and overthrow the usurper, and replace him with the count of Palatinate, husband of Christian II’s daughter (Charles V’s niece). In the end none of these schemes came to anything, but they might have had Gustav allowed the rebellion time to mature. He did not.
Nils apparently hoped and perhaps even believed that Gustav would grant him Småland in fief in exchange for his vow of loyalty, and allow the province to operate as a semi-independent state. Gustav would not. By mid-summer it was obvious Gustav was marshaling all his forces. He had launched a blistering propaganda campaign. By pamphlet and word of mouth he hammered away at the Smålanders: “You want the good old times, do you? What were the good old times? With 400–600 soldiers, when the land lay open to invaders, merchants were robbed of ships and goods, people thrown overboard and drowned like dogs, fishing stopped, cattle taken, houses burned? Was it really so good?” he reminded the populace. Then he stated his case: “Now we have 4,000–6,000 soldiers, with deadly guns and swords, harness and horses, good ships and sailors. And no one has lost a chicken.”2
This was intended for Småland. In other parts of the country he launched a campaign to slander the rebels. The province was reported to have not done its part in the revolution against the Danes. They were rumored to be making big money trading with the Danish provinces and were forcing prices up everywhere. Finally, Nils, himself was accused of incest, of lying with “two sisters of his own flesh.”3
Gustav appealed again to Christian III and was rewarded with an army of three companies of horse and foot, about 1,500 men. Commanded by Peder Pederson, they crossed into Småland on February 24, but never managed to join forces with Gustav’s troops or engage Nils’ peasant army. They accomplished little accept to rape and plunder peaceful farms and villages.
By midwinter Gustav had finally mobilized all his nobility’s quota of knights and men-at-arms. He had imported thirteen companies of German infantry and cavalry, some 6,000 mercenaries, troops who fought well enough in the open but which had proved ineffective in the Småland forests. To carry the fight into the woods, Gustav needed Swedish troops with a core unit of the toughest and the very best in the kingdom.
His propaganda machine went to work in Dalarna, circulating a letter bearing the provincial seal asking for volunteers to subdue the “pack of thieves”4 in Småland. Gustav picked up 500 Dalesmen to add to his peasant conscripts from the other provinces. He was ready to move.
Although Nils had forbidden the continuation of savagery against the Småland nobility, there were independent bands of guerrillas, or more properly, just outlaws, that were still attacking these estates. This provided Gustav with all the pretext he required and he gathered his army, minus the Danes, and pushed south toward Småland.
Nils was forced into action. In late January he advanced on Kalmar Castle, the one part of Småland still in royal hands. He assaulted the walls with his peasant army. He had no heavy artillery, no siege equipment, no trained storm troops and no chance of carrying this indomitable fortress commanded by the quite capable Germand Svensson.
Repulsed at Kalmar, Nils summoned all the Småland peasants who would follow him into Östergötland to intercept Gustav’s army. Here on the plains, the heavy cavalry was too much for the untrained peasant infantry. Beaten once again, Nils withdrew into the forests of north-eastern Småland. The royal army pursued. Nils selected for his final stand a narrow pass, deep in the woods, between Lake Hjorten and Lake Virserumssjon. Here was the perfect defensive position and here, in the forest, Nils’ Smålanders were in their element. But Gustav, too, had brought his Swedes accustomed to woodland warfare and at its heart were the 500 Dalesmen.
The battle was joined on March 20, 1543, when the lakes were still frozen over. The water that should have protected Nils’s flanks instead turned out to be his undoing. While the main body of the royal army attacked the Smålanders head on, a detachment crossed the lake ice and took the peasant army from the rear. In addition, Nils was carried from the field early in the fight with an arquebus ball in either thigh. Pressed front and rear with their leader down, the peasant army broke. Five hundred Smålanders were left lying in the field.
The rout of the Småland peasant army was complete. It broke up, each group returned to its parish and county to carry on the fight as guerilla bands. One by one Gustav’s troops recaptured these areas, returning Småland to crown control, treating the province like a conquered and occupied territory.
Nils recovered from his wounds, only to be hunted down and finally killed not far from Flaka, once his home. His body was taken to Kalmar Castle where, according to castle records, it was “quartered and in four pieces, was placed on st
ake and wheel and on his head a copper crown.”5
Gustav had had a very close call and the lessons of this last great Swedish rebellion were not lost on him. He did what he could to slow the pace of the Reformation in Sweden and lightened the tax burden on the peasantry. He cracked down on the unlawful practices of his bailiffs. Gustav had always despised incompetence and corruption in his government, but his cleansing had been done at high levels, ministers and provincial governors, officials he had personal contact with. Now he went after lower members of his civil service and had some success in correcting the injustices.
In 1544 Gustav called a Riksdag at Västerås, not to deal with some crisis, but to plan for the peace and prosperity of the kingdom. He pushed through his reforms of the succession process. The throne would go to the eldest son. The younger ones would be granted duchies with some degree of independence.
At this assembly Gustav set forth the reorganization of the military. Levies from the nobility would still provide the cavalry. Infantry would still be drawn from the peasantry, universal service in wartime, but only one in six would be required in peacetime. Peasants would be issued imported steel weapons. Besides conscripts, Gustav needed a ready reserve of trained soldiers that could be called upon at a moment’s notice. To fill this need Gustav recruited the fänikor, units of foot soldiers organized by district. These volunteers would live on their own small parcels of land and maintain themselves for the most part. Their pay would be minimal except when called up. These fänikor, about 500 men to a unit, were the beginning of what would grow into the Swedish system of provincial infantry regiments.
There would still be a standing army of professional soldiers, but as much as possible these would also come from the Swedish population instead of importing mercenaries. The Stockholm guard was 64 percent German in 1545. This had dropped to just 10 percent by 1553. The army was to become a Swedish fighting force.
Gustav continued to build his navy. In addition to the armed merchantmen and large sailing warships, he added a considerable number of galleys to his fleet in which he could use his standing army and new fänikor as both rowers and landing force. On all his ships Gustav emphasized the use of cannon and the new modern style of fighting at sea. Instead of the traditional method of closing on ships so small arms and boarding parties could be employed, Swedish ships would maintain a separation and fire their onboard artillery. At first these guns were the wrought-iron straps laid side-by-side to form a tube, held together by bands much like a barrel. These early siege type guns threw a very large ball or stone at a high trajectory only a short distance because the barrel was short; the powder charge had to be small to keep from blowing up the gun and they were breach loaded with no good way to completely seal the breach. The firing rate was slow and accuracy poor, but the effect of hitting a wooden ship with one of these missiles could be devastating.
Gustav imported the early guns and their crews from Germany, but gradually the Swedes learned to cast their own “copper” cannon made of bronze (copper and tin). These guns were superior. Using a large powder charge, they had more range and accuracy and, although muzzle-loading, could be fired rapidly. By the end of his reign, Gustav was replacing most of his naval artillery with the modern cannon. The superb showing of his infant marine force against the Lübeck fleet in the Count’s Feud indicates just how far Sweden had come.
Although Gustav was constructing the foundation for what would become a powerful military, he did his best to stay out of wars with foreign countries. However, in 1555 Russia attacked Swedish Finland, breaking a 1537 Novgorod armistice. The Russian aggression was in response to Swedish-Finnish settlement encroachment in Karelia and continuing clashes along the Finnish-Russian border.
Gustav went to Finland to lead the war effort and was able to maintain control of Viborg and Nyslott. Neither side could claim any major victories and the affair was finally settled with a somewhat humiliating peace agreement signed, this time, in Moscow. Thereafter the tsar turned his attention to the Baltic States south of the Gulf of Finland where Gustav refused to get involved.
At his last Riksdag in 1560, Gustav made final arrangements for his succession. Erik, his oldest son would be king. Johan would be duke of Finland. Östergötland would go to Magnus, and Södermanland, Närke and Värmland to Karl. The king would die later that same year. He had done his best to see that the nation building he had so carefully nurtured would be carried on.
Gustav had handled his kingdom as he would an estate. He dabbled in the agriculture of the realm, made rules and regulations on when to plant and when to harvest. He brought in new blast furnaces for the Bergslag and made rules regulating hunting and fishing. He changed the character of land ownership. One-half of the land was still owned by taxpaying peasants, but now the church and nobles combined owned one-fourth instead of one-fourth each. And the rest, one-fourth, belonged to the crown.
Much was written about Gustav by those outside Sweden, mostly his enemies. He was characterized as a usurper, evil, greedy, power hungry, cruel and treacherous. In the first couple of centuries after his death, Swedes lionized him as the father of modern Sweden, brave, clever, inspirational, wise, a great leader of men, an almost legendary figure. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. Though not a highly educated man, he was obviously very intelligent and he had a practical sense of what he could and should do for his people. He was a gifted orator, charming and persuasive when dealing with individuals, ruthless and unscrupulous when treating with enemies. Above all he was pragmatic and always proceeded with a single purpose, the building of a strong Swedish nation.
In America the construction of our nation, from the outbreak of rebellion to final consolidation at the end of the Civil War, took almost 90 years. In Sweden this same process took less than 25 years and occurred under the leadership of one man, Gustav Vasa. Perhaps his most fitting epitaph was written by his grandson Gustav Adolf: “This King Gustav was the instrument by which God again raised up our fatherland to prosperity. By his wisdom he gave peace and good government to the land.”6
7. Erik XIV and the First Northern War
Gustav Vasa had worked hard to provide for the stability of his kingdom and at the same time establish suitable positions for each of his sons, two objectives at odds with each other as many a monarch has discovered. At the Riksdag of 1544 the Estates had accepted the Succession Pact by which Erik would become king and they had agreed, in principle, that the other sons would each gain a duchy, details to be set forth in Gustav’s testament. This Testament of 1560 confirmed Johan as master of Finland, a position he had in fact held since 1556 with his own chancellery, exchequer and appointed government officials. Magnus received Östergötland and Västergötland while Karl was allotted Södermånland and Västermånland. Each duke was to receive all the revenues from his duchy ordinarily passed to the crown including fines, taxes, tariffs and tolls. They could make some limited international agreements, but were bound to be faithful to the king and provide all the armed men they could muster for his military needs. Great decisions of national importance were to be made by all the brothers in consultation. This arrangement was a prescription for trouble if any of these siblings turned out to be overly ambitious and at least two were certainly that.
All four brothers were handsome, physically strong and intelligent. In addition, they had had educational opportunities not available to their father. They had been raised as heirs to the throne with all the advantages of any other European prince.
Of the four, Erik certainly considered himself the superior. Not only was he the eldest and in line for the throne, but he was the only one of royal blood on both sides. As the only child of Gustav and his first wife, Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg, he felt apart from his siblings and the Swedish nobility, more on a par with European aristocracy in general. This was to color his pursuit of a suitable match in marriage.
At twenty-seven, Erik had for some time held his own court at Kalmar Castle, spending large sum
s to make it into a palace fit for a European prince. He was a patron of the arts, playing the lute and composing music. He was fluent in Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Finnish and German. He read Hebrew and Greek, and was well versed in history, both ancient and modern. He had an understanding of science and mathematics, and his mind turned to the abstract easily rather than to the practical as was his father’s trait. He understood the nuances of the day’s theological discussions where Gustav had not. He could be eloquent, a family trait, although his rhetoric tended to be classical in composition and delivery rather than earthy and emotional as were his father’s speeches that connected with the people. He had studied military theory and tactics, and would put into practice his own ideas as king. He inherited his father’s organizational and administrative talents, but also Gustav’s suspicious nature which in Erik became pathological. He showed a spark of genius, but lacked his father’s good common sense and ability to weigh the pros and cons of an issue and come to the best conclusion. For all his accomplishments, he lacked his father’s sense of humor and common touch especially among those he would have to socialize with and depend upon, namely, the Swedish nobility. In temperament he was high strung, nervous and could be quite violent when provoked. His passion was astrology, which was to get him into difficulty more than once.
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