Warrior Kings of Sweden

by Gary Dean Peterson

  Erik called the Estates to meet at Uppsala on May 19, 1567, to deal with the conspiracy charges against him, real or imagined. Before the Riksdag even met Erik had Svante Sture and Sten Eriksson arrested, along with other attendees to the Stockholm skerry meeting, and charged with treason before the High Court. By the time the Riksdag met, Abraham Stenbock and Ivar Ivarsson Lillieörn had received death sentences along with Erik Sture, Nils’s brother. At the meeting Jöran Persson demanded the court’s sentences be confirmed. On May 21 Nils Sture arrived from Lorraine and was promptly imprisoned.

  Erik was to speak to the assembly, but lost his notes and broke down when he tried to ad lib. By this time he was crossing in and out of sanity.

  On May 24 he visited Svante Sture in Uppsala Castle taking Sten Eriksson with him. In Svente’s cell Erik fell to his knees and begged forgiveness, actions certainly out of character for the king. Upon leaving the cell Jöran Persson caught up with him and engaged Erik in conversation. Erik then left the castle, but returned a couple of hours later, entered Nils Sture’s cell and stabbed him to death. As he rushed from the castle he ordered that all the prisoners be executed except “Herr Sten.” Within hours Svante and Erik Sture, Abraham Stenbock and Ivar Ivarsson Lillieörn were dead. Only Sten Eriksson Leijonhufvud and Sten Bauer survived—the guards didn’t know which Sten the king intended to exempt.

  Before Erik could get to Uppsala he was overtaken by his old tutor and servant Dionysius Beurreus, who tried to calm him. Erik, now quite mad, ordered him killed also, then fled into the Uppsala forests. For the next six months the king remained in a state of confusion, divorced from reality. The Råd assumed control of the government and arrested Jöran Persson. He was condemned to death, but the council did not carry out the execution. During that summer Erik secretly married Karin Månsdotter. In October he had Johan and Katarina released from prison. By Christmas he was showing signs of improvement. By New Years he seemed fully recovered. It was none too soon.

  With the Swedish government in chaos and its military paralyzed, Frederick II had seen his chance to gain his objective, the conquest of Sweden. He assembled a picked army of his best German mercenaries and put them under the command of his most competent general, Daniel Rantzau. The small army of 4,000 men crossed over from Skåne into Småland and marched to Jöuköping. It hacked its way through the forests of Hålaveden onto the plains of Östergöttland. On their way they burned the cities of Vadstena, Linköping and Söderköping, then retreated to Skänninge where they encamped for the winter.

  Rantzau sent word to Frederick that with another 2,000 men he could take Stockholm in the spring and end the war. Fortunately for Sweden the Danish king did not have the resources to hire even 2000 more mercenaries. Trying to keep pace with the growing Swedish navy, paying for the expensive German mercenaries and the interruption of the Sound toll by Horn had exhausted the Danish treasury. He couldn’t even resupply the troops Rantzau had led deep into Swedish territory and the army prepared to pull out altogether.

  Erik resumed command of Swedish forces, organized an army and set out to destroy the invaders. Rantzau’s men needed little encouragement to evacuate and were soon in full retreat with Erik in close pursuit. With the Danes expelled, Erik returned to Stockholm and internal matters. He freed Jöran Persson and reinstated him as secretary. On July 4 he publicly married Karin, legitimizing her two children. Erik had returned to sanity and seemed to have regained complete control of the country, but in reality his authority was only superficial.

  By midsummer the dukes, fired by their own ambitions and stung by Erik’s marriage to a commoner, led an aristocracy outraged by Persson’s return to power. A week after Karin’s coronation a force gathered at Vadstena and began marching north, gaining support as it moved along. Erik’s commanders and troops deserted him, some joining the opposing army. What loyal troops he could find he personally led into the field. At the battle of Botkyrka just outside Stockhom, the advance was slowed momentarily, but the tide was moving and its momentum would not be denied. By September the dukes and their supporters were at the gates of Stockholm. Now the city burghers deserted Erik as did the Råd and even his half-sisters and their families. The Stockholm garrison turned Jöran Persson over to the dukes who promptly put him to death. The gates were opened and Karl led the rebels into the city. In Erik’s last stand in the city center, Sten Eriksson was killed and Ivan’s treaty embassy barely escaped with their lives. Finally, on September 28 Erik surrendered and Johan entered the city the following day to take over the government. Erik’s tortuous reign was over.

  Erik would live another nine years in confinement with Karin and their family. He bequeathed to Sweden an improved military, naval dominance of the Baltic, an exhausted treasury (which Gustav had so carefully built), a war that had drained all its participants, deep enmities between the crown and the high aristocracy that would last for decades and a program of imperial expansion that would last for a hundred and fifty years.

  Gustav had freed his country. Erik had expanded Sweden’s borders and created a navy to rival any in the Baltic Sea. A new power was emerging on the northern frontier of Europe.

  8. King Johan III and the End of the First Northern War

  With Erik now a prisoner, the Riksdag met in Stockholm on January 24, 1569, to decide the succession question. The situation harkened back to the old days of the Råd selecting the king. Gustav’s efforts to establish a hereditary monarchy were not entirely cancelled, however, for the Riksdag considered only three candidates: Johan, Karl (Erik’s two half brothers) and Erik’s son Gustav (still a minor and therefore not a serious contender).

  Karl conferred with members of the Råd to assess his support, but the nobility had had enough of instability. The council was of one mind and that was to lay out a clear line of succession and they would adhere to Gustav’s Testament in doing so. Karl acquiesced and signaled his support for his brother to become king and his nephew, Sigismund, to be next in line.

  On January 26 the Estates called Erik to appear before them. No prisoner before the bar on his judgment day ever felt more anxiety. He came with two prepared speeches, ready to accept return to the throne or recognition of the worst, the headsman’s axe.

  Neither was required. In fact Erik was not even allowed to speak. The Riksdag merely renounced their allegiance to him, officially removing him from the throne. Johan was declared the new king of Sweden with his son, Sigismund, next in line. The succession Pact of 1544 was reaffirmed in spite of the election that had just occurred. Johan’s coronation took place six months later, a particularly subdued and austere ceremony befitting the circumstances.

  Johan now ruled Sweden as Johan III, yet he did not rest easy as he had inherited the paranoia which seems to have run in the Vasa family, perhaps with good reason. There were constant rumors, some of them probably true, of Erik supporters conspiring for the return of the deposed king. Johan moved Erik from place to place, Stockholm to Åbo, to Gripsholm, to Västerås, to Orbyhusin in an attempt to stay ahead of plans for a breakout. At first he even kept Erik and Karin separated to prevent more progeny that might threaten his or Sigimund’s throne, and at times Erik’s jailers treated him very inhumanely. Erik finally died February 24, 1577, after falling ill. (Recent tests of his exhumed body show he had a high level of arsenic in his system when he died. He was probably murdered although arsenic was commonly used in medicines of the time and that could account for the presence of the poison.)

  Karin Månsdotter remained loyal to the crown and lived to see her daughter marry into Swedish nobility. Erik’s son, Gustav, went to Poland in 1575 to be educated in a Jesuit school and later moved to Russia where the tsar, Boris Godunov, tried to use him to advantage in dealing with Sweden and Poland, but found Gustav uncooperative. He died in Russia in 1607.

  While keeping one eye on Erik, Johan also had to deal with the war he had inherited from his half-brother. All parties were by now completely exhausted from the struggle. Frederic
k could not even take advantage of a Swedish civil war and a government in chaos. His one potentially lethal thrust into Sweden was stymied because he had no money to pay his German mercenaries. With Johan’s ascendance to the throne the coalition quickly fell apart. Johan inherently favored Poland as a potential partner or ally rather than Russia as Erik had done. Ties were further fractured by Poland’s desire to become a Baltic sea power, aspirations that neither Denmark or Lübeck could abide.

  Even before his official instatement, Johan sent a commission to negotiate a peace with the belligerents. In November 1568 they signed a peace treaty at Roskilde decidedly partial to Denmark and Lübeck. By its terms Danish and Swedish territories would be returned to the prewar status except Swedish Estonia would be turned over to Duke Magnus and Lübeck would recover its trade privileges of 1523 over Sweden. Johan could not ratify such a treaty and began to arm for a final campaign he hoped would give him a better bargaining position. It would not.

  Johan put his dominating fleet to sea in 1569; it captured several Danish and Lübeck merchantmen, but did not make contact with either country’s war fleets and in the end accomplished little. In July of that year, however, a Danish-Lübeck fleet shelled Reval, putting pressure on Swedish forces there. In November Frederick sent a small army against Varberg, which fell after only weak resistance. This was a particular blow to Johan as he planned to use the Halland fortress to exchange for Älvsborg. No other important battles were fought along the Scanian frontier between the two countries, but raids and counterraids continued to decimate an already impoverished population on both sides of that border.

  Finally, in 1570, Frederick and Johan agreed to a congress of arbitration to end the war. The mediators, meeting in Stettin, Pomerania, included Duke John Frederick of Pomerania presiding, Maximilian II (the new emperor replacing Charles V), King Charles IX of France, Sigismund II Augustus of Poland and the elector of Saxony with delegations from Denmark, Sweden, and Lübeck. It is interesting that Sigismund managed to represent Poland as one of the arbiters and not one of the belligerents.

  The Peace of Stettin was concluded on November 30, 1570, with terms that seemed to be a defeat for Sweden on every point. Johan was to renounce his claims to Jämtland, Härjedland and Gotland. Sweden got back Älvsborg, but was to pay 75,000 dalers in 1571 and 37,000 a year for the next two years. The three-crown issue was to be arbitrated later, but in the meantime both countries could display the symbol. Johan was to cease his attempts to extract tolls on Gulf of Finland shipping. Lübeck’s trade privileges granted by Gustav in 1523 were to be restored except the guarantee of the monopoly of Swedish foreign trade and Sweden was to pay 75,000 dalers to Lübeck as a settlement for claims going clear back to Gustav Vasa’s war debt.

  On the matter of Livonia-Estonia, Maximilian took the opportunity to insert himself into this already complicated equation. Poland’s acquisition of most of Livonia was recognized, but the rest of Livonia and Estonia was to be part of the empire. Maximilian would reimburse Sweden and Denmark for money spent in defending the former holdings of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword against the encroachment of the Russians. This territory would be entrusted to Frederick II as fief to protect for the emperor except for the towns of Reval and Weissenstein which would remain in Swedish hands.

  In exchange for all these concessions, Johan III received only Frederick’s recognition of Sweden’s sovereignty, but this was no small matter. After all, Denmark entered the war with the objective of conquering and reestablishing control over the Swedish-Finnish realm. In this he had utterly failed, thanks to Erik’s ingenuity and the immense treasury Gustav had left. Sweden immerged from the war with a much improved military. Her fleet dominated the Baltic. Her improved infantry, weapons and tactics had stood up to the best in German mercenaries. Only Sweden’s cavalry seemed woefully inadequate. What’s more, she retained at least a foothold in Estonia and as to the punitive terms of the Stettin Peace, it remained to be seen whether all of the odious provisions could be enforced. Here Johan’s most effective weapon would be simple procrastination.

  The end of the devastating Seven Years Northern War (First Northern War) allowed Johan time and energy to deal with Swedish internal matters which were coming to a head. Perhaps the most pressing was a crisis developing within the Church of Sweden driven to a large extent by forces outside the country.

  Since the beginning of the Reformation, much had happened in the world of the once unified Western European Latin Church. The breakaway of the Church of England initiated by Henry VIII to facilitate his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn was now firmly established under his daughter Elizabeth I. Following Henry’s death, Parliament had passed several laws during the reign of his only son Edward VI (1547–1553) reforming the church along Lutheran and Calvinist lines, but all this had been reversed by his daughter Mary I (1553–1558) who had reinstated Catholicism as the state religion. Her early death brought the succession of Elizabeth (1558–1603) who restored the independent Church of England which was never again seriously threatened.

  Across the channel, Spain was in a struggle for supremacy over the Low Countries. Controlled by Burgundy since the 14th century, today’s Belgium and the Netherlands absorbed the Protestant movement in the early 1500s at the same time its maritime commercial power was gaining strength. In 1516, the Low Countries came under Spanish rule when Charles, duke of Burgundy, became king of Spain and part of the greatest empire in the world when he was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as Charles V (1519). Charles first made his sister Maria queen of the Netherlands then set about persecuting the Protestants just as he did in Germany.

  Upon Maria’s death in 1555, Charles turned over rule of the Netherlands to his son Philip II of Spain who stepped up the pressure against the Protestant movement. Finally in 1568, the nobles led by William I (the Silent) of Orange revolted against their Spanish overlords. In the wars that followed, the Spanish had the advantage on land, but the Dutch dominated the sea. By 1579 the southern provinces (Belgium) had returned to Spanish rule, subject to the Holy See in Rome. The northern provinces (the Netherlands) formed the Protestant Union of Utrecht which declared their independence in 1581. Wars continued intermittently until Dutch independence was recognized by Spain in 1648. These wars for Dutch independence would eventually affect Sweden’s drive for empire in Germany.

  Switzerland, likewise, was caught up in the Reformation and here the fractious nature of the movement quickly became evident. No sooner had Lutheranism been introduced into the German speaking cantons than a more radical form was established by Zwingli in Zurich. French speaking Switzerland developed its own version led by John Calvin centered in Geneva. From Switzerland these new sects of Protestantism spread into France, then back into Germany.

  In France, the Reformation movement was based primarily on Calvin’s teachings. His French followers became known as Huguenots. They were particularly strong in southern France, although by the 1550s, they had communities in Paris, Lyons, Orléans, Angers and Rouen. Attempts to suppress the movement were made by King Frances I and Henry II, but with only limited success. At Henry II’s death (1559) France crowned Charles IX, still a minor, with the queen-dowager Catherine de Medici as regent. The Huguenots took advantage of the weakened central government to further expand and in January 1562 Catherine issued an edict of toleration allowing the Huguenots to practice their religion freely outside the towns as long as they didn’t carry weapons, but all Catholic church properties forcibly taken by the Huguenots were to be returned. This did little to calm the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, however, and in March of the same year the first of a series of Huguenot wars broke out. These wars continued intermittently until Henry III issued the Edict of Nantes in April 1598 which granted the Huguenots full religious freedom and admission to all public offices.

  Meanwhile, Calvinism had also spread into Germany with a strong center in Emden in lower Saxony across Ews Bay from the Neth
erlands. From here its influence had a major effect on the Dutch Protestant movement and spread to England where its adherents were known as Puritans. In Scotland the Calvinist form of Protestantism became firmly established by 1555 under the leadership of John Knox and was supported by the nobility.

  In Germany the Protestant movement was becoming badly divided. The original Lutheranism had subdivided into Lutheranism and Melanchthonism. In addition Zwinglianism and Calvinism had emerged from Switzerland and new forms like the Unitarians (Socinians) and Anabaptists appeared. From Germany Protestantism spread into Poland and Hungary.

  In Hungary the Reformation was backed by the nobility and grew rapidly though again there was much dissent as to which form to adopt.

  King Sigismund I (1501–1548) energetically suppressed the spread of Protestantism in Poland, but footholds were established in the University of Krakow, at Posen and in Danzig. Sigismund II Augustus was not as vigilant and under his rule the Reformation gained strength until the Religious Peace of Warsaw in 1573 granted equal rights to Catholics and dissidents.

  Denmark was wrestling with Lutheranism at the time of Christian II (1513–1523). In fact his bias toward the movement was one of the factors in his removal by the nobles. However, Frederick II, though he professed allegiance to the Catholic Church at his coronation in 1523, soon afterward threw his support behind the reformers. At the Rigsdag of Odensee (1527), he granted freedom of religion to all in the kingdom and took over the appointment of the clerical hierarchy. Under Christian III (1534–59) Lutheranism was established as the state religion and he forced the remaining reluctant nobility into acceptance. At the Rigsdag of Copenhagen in 1546, the last rights and vestiges of the Catholic religion were removed. Christian then moved to establish Lutheranism in the rest of his domain, namely Norway and Iceland (the Greenland colony was lost in the early 1400s, the last recorded contact being 1408).