Denmark’s King Frederik II died on April 4, 1588
when his son Kristian was 11 years old.
Denmark was governed by a Regency Council
led by Chancellor Niels Kaas.
In 1589 Kristian’s sister Anna married
Scotland’s King James VI.
In 1590 the Council persuaded Emperor Rudolf II
to grant Kristian full power in Holstein.
He tended to side with the Regency rather than his mother,
and she finally withdrew to Nyköbing Castle in Falster.
He was declared of age and was crowned
King Kristian IV on August 29, 1596.
He inherited the Denmark of today plus the duchies of Scania,
Halland and Blekinge, the islands of Götland and Ösel,
and the kingdom of Norway.
One of his first acts was to take away Nordfjord in Norway
from the astronomer Tyco Brahe who then moved to Prague
where he was patronized by Emperor Rudolf II.
Johannes Kepler became his assistant.
In 1597 Kristian married Anne Catherine of Brandenburg.
Nobles on the large estates governed the peasants living there.
The burghers were a rising class and united
with the clergy against the nobles.
A stock exchange was established in Copenhagen harbor.
Kristian IV expanded the town of Oslo
in Norway and planned fifteen cities.
In Copenhagen he had a residential university constructed,
and he sponsored several expeditions to Greenland.
In 1604 the Council of State prevented Kristian IV
from declaring war on Sweden; but in 1611 the King insisted
by threatening to use his power as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein
to attack Sweden, and taxes were raised.
Kristian led the army of 6,000 men into Blekinge and invaded
Smaaland while another army advanced on Älvsborg (Elfsborg).
A Norwegian army invaded West Götland,
and together the three armies took Kalmar before King Karl IX
could lead his Swedish army of 12,000 there.
On August 3 Kalmar Castle with 200 guns
surrendered to the Danes.
In late autumn the Danes went into winter quarters,
and the Swedes led by Prince Gustav Adolf recaptured Oland
and all but Kalmar.
Kristian rejected a peace offer and recruited
more forces from England and Germany.
In 1612 the Danes besieged Älvsborg
with 10,000 men and captured it.
Then they took Gullberg and Oland,
but the Danish fleet could not reduce Stockholm.
Sweden’s King Karl IX died in October,
and his son King Gustav Adolf proposed peace.
That month envoys met at Knäred in Halland,
and the treaty was signed on January 20, 1613,
ending the Kalmar War.
Denmark agreed to exempt Sweden from Sound dues,
and both sides returned conquered territory except
that Sweden had to pay 1,000,000 riksdalers
for Älvsborg over six years.
Both sides had wasted their resources.
Kristian’s wife had died in 1612,
and on December 31, 1615 he married Kirsten Munk.
She was a noble but untitled, and so it was a morganatic
marriage which meant that she and their children
could not inherit their father’s titles or privileges.
King Kristian helped design ships
and increased the fleet from nineteen to sixty.
The Danish East India Company was organized in 1616.
Two Danish ships gained trade with Ceylon (Sri Lanka),
and a trading post was acquired in 1620
at Tranquebar south of Madras.
Dutch immigrants also helped found
the Danish West India Company in 1625.
While Sweden formed commercial alliances with the
Netherlands and Lübeck, Denmark’s Kristian IV was
isolated and sent warships to protect new trade routes
by the Elbe and Weser rivers.
His attempt to annex episcopal sees
in northern Germany aroused suspicion.
In 1620 Dutch envoys came to Denmark
and proposed an alliance.
Kristian convoked a meeting with princes of Lower Saxony
at Segeberg, but they only warned Emperor Ferdinand II.
After the Protestant Union dissolved, Kristian formed
defensive alliances with England and the Netherlands.
His son Frederik was elected archbishop of Bremen,
and Hamburg submitted to the overlordship of Holstein.
English envoy Robert Anstruther visited Sweden and Denmark
in 1624, and both nations agreed to contribute troops.
Kristian increased his army to 30,000 men,
and German princes meeting at Lauenburg chose him
to command the army defending Lower Saxony.
Kristian defied his Danish Council by leading the Protestant
effort against the Emperor and the
Catholic League as the Duke of Holstein.
Kristian IV left his son Kristian to run the government
while he led an army with more Germans than Danes.
They were north of Weser when Maximilian of Bavaria
attacked them on July 18, 1625.
Kristian had a horse accident and stayed away
from the front for two months.
In early 1626 he led his army of 40,000 men and occupied
Wolfenbüttel in Brunswick, but the allied army commanded
by Ernest von Mansfeld was defeated
at Dessau by Wallenstein’s forces.
The Danes continued to march toward Silesia but ran short
of supplies and retreated.
Wallenstein crossed the Elbe
and took over most of Jutland in July.
Kristian’s forces attacked the imperial army led by Tilly
near Lutter am Barenberg on August 27.
Each side had about 20,000 soldiers; but Denmark’s army
had 6,000 killed and 2,500 captured while
the imperial army had only 200 casualties.
The rest of the Danish army surrendered on October 6
near Aalborg and joined the Emperor.
Denmark’s Council blamed Kristian IV, his son who spent
time with his mistress, and the bad advice
of the King’s wife Kirsten Munk.
The Council persuaded Kristian IV to convoke a
National Assembly, and they approved
new taxes and defensive preparations.
The Council demanded peace negotiations
and its control of finances.
In 1628 Sweden promised Denmark eight ships in the Baltic,
and Denmark closed the Sound to Sweden’s enemies.
Kristian led a naval attack on the coast of Holstein
but could not capture any of Pomerania.
The Danish garrison withdrew from Stralsund,
and Sweden protected the Hanseatic towns.
Imperial forces held all of Jutland
except the stronghold at Glückstadt.
A peace conference was held at Lübeck,
but Kristian would not agree to anything
that made his rival ally Sweden stronger.
Wallenstein was afraid of Sweden’s Gustav Adolf
and
accepted most Danish demands, returning conquered territory.
Kristian promised not to interfere in Germany,
and he
and Wallenstein signed the treaty of Lübeck on May 22, 1629.
Ferdinand II ratified it on June 7, ending Denmark’s
major participation in the Thirty Years’ War.
The province of Jutland had been devastated,
but the only help they got was a small reduction
in taxes and some money for the poor.
Kristian IV divorced Kirsten Munk who had borne
twelve children, but the last one in 1629 was apparently
by her lover Otto Ludwig of Salm-Kyrburg.
The King banished her to Jutland while he had an affair
with her chambermaid Vibeke Kruse for the rest of his life.
Kristian IV supervised rebuilding and the construction
of two new churches in Copenhagen.
New buildings provided homes for hundreds of sailors,
and new ships were built to revive his East Indian Company.
Fortifications were constructed, and the national army organized
in 1628 was maintained to serve again later in the long war.
The only revenue the Council provided was by taxes
with peasants paying three-fourths of them.
The King got money from his fiefs; but the Council blocked
any increases because they could not limit his spending.
Although fewer ships were passing through the straits,
Kristian increased the Sound dues he got by 300%.
He turned to advisors from Germany and Holstein.
Dues from the Elbe caused conflict with Hamburg.
He armed twenty ships, and four days of fighting
removed the threat from Hamburg.
The Council had opposed this, but they managed to keep him
from going to war against Sweden over Rügen.
The King also tried to get Bremen for his son,
and a Danish force occupied Freiburg;
but the peaceful Danish court averted war again.
In July 1633 Emperor Ferdinand II approved Kristian’s
collecting dues from the Elbe for four years.
Prince Kristian married Magdalene Sibylle of Saxony
on October 5, 1634, but they had no children.
In 1642 Kristian IV blockaded Hamburg
until it accepted him as overlord.
Danish delegates attended the peace conferences
that began at Münster and Osnabrück in the fall of 1643.
Denmark alienated the Dutch by tripling the Sound dues
and by making a commercial treaty with Spain.
In December a Swedish army led by Torstensson
invaded Holstein and took over the province
except for Glückstadt and Krempe.
Kristian mobilized his army and navy,
and Torstensson was deterred from invading Funen.
On May 16, 1644 Denmark’s fleet met Dutch ships
commanded by Admiral Thijssen who retreated.
Another Danish fleet defeated
a force of Dutch and Swedish ships.
Sweden’s main navy was commanded
by Admiral Klas Fleming, and in June
they attacked the Danes near Kolberg Heath.
Kristian lost an eye, and many officers were killed.
After imperial forces left Holstein, the Swedes
led by Helmut Wrangel occupied the province.
On October 13 a Swedish-Dutch fleet of 40 ships
defeated
17 Danish vessels, and only three Danish frigates
made it back to Copenhagen.
The French and Dutch offered peace, and Kristian accepted
a conference that began at Brömsebro on February 8, 1645.
In the treaty signed on August 13 Denmark ceded Halland
to Sweden for thirty years to guarantee the peace,
and the Elbe dues was ended for Sweden and Holland.
That year Denmark also made
a treaty of friendship with France.
In Denmark the Provincial and National Assemblies
now had more power than the Council,
and they provided a forum for public grievances.
Nobles no longer dominated, and the lower nobles
wanted more representation in government.
The Institution of Land Commissioners which began in 1638
showed the ineffectiveness of local government.
Korfitz Ulfeldt became powerful as High Steward
and restricted the King who depended upon him.
Kristian’s many children quarreled, and the King favored
Hannibal Sehested who governed Norway actively.
Ulfeldt went to Holland in June 1646, and after a year
they had an agreement to improve relations;
but Kristian complained about how much money he spent.
Prince Kristian succumbed from drinking on June 2, 1647.
King Kristian’s health declined,
and he died on February 28, 1648.
King Johan III had ruled Sweden since 1568.
The estates at the Riksdag on March 7, 1590 accepted
a new Succession Pact, extending it to the female line.
Sigismund, who was ruling Poland-Lithuania as King
Zygmunt III, married Anna of Austria on May 31, 1592.
After Johan III died on November 17, 1592,
the Polish parliament gave Zygmunt III permission
to accept the crown of Sweden as Sigismund.
On January 8, 1593 Johan’s brother Karl
and the Council established an interim government.
Sigismund wrote that he approved this
and that he would be delayed.
Duke Karl convened in March at Uppsala the Lutheran synod
with four bishops and 300 priests who declared holy scripture
their confession of faith along with the creeds
of the apostles, Nicaea, and Athanasius.
Delegates also accepted Olaus Petri’s Handbook of 1529,
the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and the Ordinance of 1571.
They made the Lutheran faith the national religion;
Catholics, Calvinists, and other non-Lutherans could remain
in Sweden but were prohibited from holding public services.
Duke Karl and the Council members also signed their decrees.
These decisions were printed and distributed
to all the towns and provinces.
Many Orthodox Christians in Finland fled to Russia.
By breaking with Rome as well as Denmark,
the Swedes severed ties to the west.
Education had suffered; but the delegates also decided
to revive the University of Uppsala,
and its new charter was signed on March 15, 1595.
Zygmunt returned in September 1593 and was crowned
King Sigismund III Vasa of Sweden on February 19, 1594.
Karl brought 3,000 men and dismissed the papal nuncio
Malaspina and the Jesuits from the procession.
He made sure that Sigismund swore to uphold
religious freedom before he was crowned.
A new land law passed in 1594 established the principle
that the King must sign a charter approved
by the people’s representatives.
King Sigismund III Vasa soon delegated authority
and went back to Poland.
His appointees could not compete
with the Council and Duke Karl.
On May 18 Sweden in a treaty at Teusina agreed to withdraw
from Ivangorod, Jama, Koporye, and the Korela fortress
while Russia renounced claims to Estonia including Narva.
Sweden’s sovereignty over Estonia was confirmed,
and Russia accepted the border with Finland.
On September 29, 1595 the Riksdag of Söderköping met
with more farmers than usual and elected Duke Karl regent.
He had the convent at Vadstena closed
and confiscated its property.
Finland had become a grand duchy in 1581.
Governor Klas Fleming of Finland supported
Sigismund and refused to follow Karl’s government.
The Council declined to approve Karl’s military plans;
but in 1596 the peasants of Osterbotten rose against
Klas Fleming with Karl’s blessing, and 11,000 people
were killed in the “War of Clubs.”
Fleming suppressed the revolt but died on April 13, 1597.
Regent Karl summoned the estates to Arboga in February 1597.
The nobles and burgers were absent, but the clergy
and
peasants supported him against Sigismund and the aristocrats.
Poland had gone back to being Catholic, and Sigismund’s
attempt to strengthen the Catholic religion
in Sweden alienated people and much of the clergy.
The papal nuncio Malaspina tried to help him institute
the counter-reformation, but opposition was strong.
Finally in May 1598 Sigismund invaded his own country
with an army of 5,000 Poles, causing a civil war.
They gathered at Gdansk (Danzig) and sailed in eighty ships
on July 23, reaching Kalmar eight days later.
The castle surrendered without fighting,
and its commanders were imprisoned.
Sigismund’s forces were trapped at Stangebro, and he agreed
to a humiliating treaty at Linköping on September 28.
He withdrew to Kalmar and sailed back to Poland.
Nobles and clergy met in 1599 and gave Sigismund
four months to return; but he rejected this while
his defenders held out in Kalmar Castle until May 12.
On July 24 a Riksdag at Stockholm deposed Sigismund
and gave him six months to send his son Wladyslaw whom
they would accept as king if he would be
educated in Sweden in the Lutheran faith.
They condemned Chancellor Erik Sparre and four senators,
and the five were executed in the
“Linköping Bloodbath” on March 20, 1600.
Sparre believed in a hereditary monarchy under constitutional
principles and had written Postulata nobilium in 1594.
He thought Sigismund was the rightful ruler of Sweden
and had fled to Poland in 1597
and returned with Sigismund’s invading army.
Duke Karl went to war in Livonia and captured Pernau
and Dorpat in October 1600.
His fleet began blockading Riga in May 1601,
but it was not effective.
Cold weather caused Sweden’s crops to fail 1601-03,
but the farmers survived by eating their seed corn.
The new seeds were not as well adapted to Swedish soil.
Karl ruled Sweden but did not call himself “king” until
Sigismund’s younger brother Johan renounced his claim.
On February 24, 1604 the Riksdag at Linköping announced
that Sigismund had abdicated, and on March 22
they proclaimed King Karl IX their ruler.
That year Karl got the Riksdag at Norrköping to pass
a special tax for three years to hire an army of 9,000 men.
He invaded Livonia again; but the Polish army led by
Jan Karol Chodkiewicz defeated them near Weissenstein.
Hogenskild Bielke rebelled and was put to death in 1605.
In September of that year Karl’s army of 11,000
at Riga lost at least 7,600 men.
The Poles fought with 3,400 men led
by Chodkiewicz and lost only 900.
Karl suspected plots by the old nobility against his Vasa family,
and at the Riksdag of 1605 more than
a hundred people were detained without a trial.
Karl was finally crowned on March 15, 1607.
King Karl IX worked to improve mining and commerce.
He enforced economy at court and designated the offices
of Drotsete, Chancellor, Admiral, and Treasurer in the Council.
During the chaotic time of troubles in Moscow an army of
1,200 Swedes and 5,000 mercenaries led by Jakob de la
Gardie entered Moscow in 1609 and later captured Novgorod
before they were defeated at Klushino in 1610.
That year Karl had a stroke
and could barely speak at the Riksdag.
Prince Gustav Adolf began speaking for him,
and Axel Oxenstierna helped administer the government.
On April 4, 1611 Denmark declared war on Sweden.
Danes had already taken Kexholm back from Russian Finland
on March 2, and in May they captured Kalmar.
King Karl IX died on October 30.
Karl IX was succeeded by his oldest son Gustav II Adolf
who was born on December 9, 1594.
Gustav Adolf was fluent in Swedish and German and was well
educated by his tutor Johan Skytte who exposed him to the
works of Livy, Polybius, Cicero, and Seneca.
Gustav also learned Latin, Italian, French, Dutch, English,
Scottish, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Greek.
At the age of 10 he began attending Council meetings,
and at 15 he started governing his duchy of Vastmanland.
The Riksdag met on December 6, 1611,
and the Council persuaded Gustav Adolf to pledge that
he would uphold the thirteen articles of a new charter
which included the right of every person to due process of law.
Then the Council promised their allegiance to him on
January 4, 1612, and the nobles persuaded Gustav
to let them have the best positions.
The noble Per Brahe had 747 farms, and De la Gardie had 300.
New or increased taxes required the consent of the Council,
and only nobles could be appointed to the exchequer
or serve in the chancery with fixed salaries.
Although he signed away prerogatives of his father, the young
Gustav II was very capable and had Axel Oxenstierna
as Chancellor, giving him much more power than Karl had.
They reformed the exchequer and chancery.
Gustav allowed foreigners to practice their religion because
he
believed that no sovereign could control a person’s conscience.
Gustav and Oxenstierna improved the economy by setting up
a new system of staple towns for export shipping, maintaining
and adding roads and waterways, modernizing taxation to
increase revenues, and encouraging investment of foreign
capital and immigration of foreigners including mercenaries.
The number of foreigners in the
House of Nobles increased to 40%.
The War of Kalmar against Denmark was threatening,
and King Gustav led raids in Skane and was almost captured.
In August 1612 Denmark’s King Kristian IV attacked Vaxholm
with a fleet of 34 ships; but 1,200 Flemish mercenaries arrived
in time to defend the town, and in September
the Danes withdrew for the winter.
Scottish recruiter Jacob Spens and British Robert Anstruther
mediated a peace at Knäred
that was signed on January 20, 1613.
Denmark gave up conquered territory, and free trade was
established so that Swedes no longer had to pay the Sound
dues when their ships passed through Øresund.
Sweden conceded Jamtland and northern Finnmark
and modified their levy tolls at Riga.
Denmark would keep Älvsborg and Göteborg (Gothenburg)
until the Swedes paid a ransom of one million riksdalers.
Sweden had to raise taxes and managed to pay it off
in six years with the help of copper they mined
and exported through Göteborg to Holland.
King Gustav owned most of the copper mines
and in 1620 formed the Swedish Trading Company.
In 1614 he instituted a Supreme Court of Appeal
with the Drotsete as president to improve judicial procedures.
The new School Ordinance of 1611 was inadequate.
In this era Sweden’s schools went from 5 in the morning
to 5 in the afternoon with a three-hour break at mid-day.
The 51-hour week devoted 31 hours to Latin,
13 to music, and 7 to religion.
A contentious quarrel between the professors
Johannes Messenius (1579-1636) and Johannes Rudbeckius
(1581-1646) at Uppsala resulted in both men
leaving the university in 1613.
Rudbeckius was personal chaplain to King Gustav.
In 1619 he became bishop of Västerås where
he founded Sweden’s first secondary school in 1623.
Rudbeckius also began the first school
for girls in Sweden in 1632.
His son Olaus Rudbeck discovered how lymphatic vessels
contribute to the circulation of blood, and he demonstrated
his work for Queen Kristina at court in 1652.
Messenius wrote historical dramas.
In 1616 he was convicted of having conspired with Jesuits
and King Sigismund and was sentenced to death,
but King Gustav commuted it to prison where
he spent the rest of his life writing
a history of Sweden and other works.
In 1651 the son and grandson of Messenius
were executed for plotting against the monarchy.
In 1613 Gustav’s younger brother Karl Filip made a bid
to become the ruler of Russia but lost out to Mikhail Romanov.
However, the Swedish army led by Jakob de la Gardie seized
Novgorod and conquered much of northwest Russia.
The Muscovite army fought back
and regained Gdov on Lake Peipus.
King Gustav participated with 2,000 reinforcements in the
spring of 1614, but their siege of Pskov failed in 1615.
British merchant and ambassador John Merrick mediated
the conflict with Russia, and finally on February 27, 1617
they signed the treaty of Stolbovo.
Sweden gave back Novgorod and three other towns
for an indemnity of 20,000 rubles,
and they recognized Mikhail Romanov as Tsar.
The Russians ceded the Ingrian lands and some of Karelia
to Sweden’s province of Finland and renounced Ivangorod,
Jama, Kopore, Nöteborg,
and Livonia which had become Polish.
Russia also agreed not to aid Poland against Sweden.
The Swedes now controlled all of the Gulf of Finland.
Also in 1617 at the Riksdag they established the four estates
of the nobles, clergy, bourgeoisie, and the farmers, and
Chancellor Oxenstierna got a progressive ordinance passed.
The nobles voted in three classes of 12 barons,
22 council families, and 92 other nobles,
and two classes were a majority.
Each of the nine provinces was responsible
for providing one regiment of infantry,
and to do so they could conscript one man out of ten.
In 1616 Gustav had sired an illegitimate son Gustav
of Vasaborg by his mistress Margareta Slots.
On November 25, 1620 King Gustav married
Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg even though
her brother Georg Wilhelm objected.
She gave birth to Kristina on October 16, 1623,
and her sister Catherine would marry
Prince Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania in 1626.
King Gustav with 158 ships and a Swedish army of
14,700 infantry, 3,150 cavalry, and 375 cannons invaded
Livonia and besieged its capital Riga on August 29, 1621.
Lithuanian Hetman Krzysztof Radziwiłł had only
1,500 soldiers and capitulated on September 25.
Poland had controlled Livonia for the previous sixty years.
After Poland’s Ottoman war in October ended in defeat
near Khotyn in the Ukraine, their army marched to Livonia.
In January 1622 Swedes seized Valmiera and other castles
in Livonia, but a battle against Radziwiłł’s army of 3,000
on August 10 at Mittau was a draw, ending with a truce.
Gustav proposed a Swedish-Lithuanian union.
He appointed Jakob de la Gardie
who governed Livonia until 1628.
In 1623 a Spanish fleet and British mercenaries helped
the Poles invade Sweden.
Gustav with 21 ships threatened
the port of Gdansk (Danzig) to no avail.
In 1624 England, Brandenburg, and other Protestant nations
were trying to form an alliance, but Gustav declined to join
because he would not give up control and wanted an allied
army of 50,000 men and a fleet in the North Sea as well as
in the Baltic Sea to protect Sweden from a Danish attack.
Instead the Protestants allied with Kristian IV of Denmark.
In June 1625 King Gustav led Sweden’s army of 20,000 men
who landed in Livonia and captured Tartu (Dorpat)
and Mitau in August, conquering north of the Dvina
and east to the border of Russia.
Radziwiłł recaptured several castles in October.
The Council of Sweden secretly approved the mobilizing
of 125 warships and 14,000 soldiers.
On January 17, 1626 King Gustav led an army of 4,900 men
and attacked a smaller Polish-Lithuanian force of 2,000 men
at Wallhof in Latvia, inflicting about a thousand casualties
while Gustav claimed his army did not lose a single man.
In May he invaded Polish Prussia with more than 125 ships
and 8,150 infantry and 1,700 cavalry.
They landed in Pillau, and many Protestant commercial towns
in the lower Vistula welcomed them.
Gustav wanted to take the port of Gdansk which had
64,000 people, but Poland’s Zygmunt III in two months
raised a force of 6,780 cavalry and 4,430 infantry.
After taking Walichnow he led a force of 900 men
against Gniew on September 22.
Gustav’s forces managed to fight them off,
and both sides buried their dead during a cease-fire.
On September 29 about 10,000 Swedish infantry and 2,100
cavalry fought the renowned Polish cavalry of 14,000,
and in this battle the Polish-Lithuanian army had
about 500 men killed while the Swedes lost only 30.
Gustav went back to Sweden for the winter while Chancellor
Oxenstierna governed the conquered territories harassed
by Polish forces led by Koniecpolski who won some victories
in the spring of 1627, persuading the
Brandenburg Elector to side with Polish-Lithuania.
Gustav was slightly wounded in June, and the Swedish army
managed to stop the Polish advance in August at Dirschau.
Gustav was shot in the shoulder
while his new artillery fought organized as a brigade.
On November 28 the two sides fought a small naval battle
at Oliwa in which one Swedish ship was sunk,
and another was captured.
In 1627 Spain stopped minting copper coins in order
to correct the massive inflation that had caused.
The price of copper dropped, but Sweden increased
its exports
of copper by five times in the next decade and iron seven times.
Lacking silver, Sweden used copper in its coins
which made money heavier and harder to steal.
The 2-dollar coin weighed more than eight pounds.
To support industry Sweden banned
the export of half-finished goods.
The wealthy merchant Louis de Geer moved to Stockholm
in 1627, and he and the De Besche brothers brought Dutch
advances in technology to the manufacturing
using Swedish iron and copper.
De Geer provided the royal munitions with 20,000 muskets,
13,670 pikes, and 4,700 suits of cavalry armor in 1629-30.
In 1628 Sweden lacked funds and changed to a defensive
strategy, but on April 28 Denmark agreed
to an alliance for three years.
Gustav in June sent 600 men to relieve Wallenstein’s
imperial siege of Stralsund.
That year Sweden established a land survey office
that became a model for Europe.
On February 2, 1629 a Swedish army commanded
by Field Marshal Herman Wrangel defeated
Poles led by Potocki at Górzno.
King Gustav returned to Prussia with an army,
but on June 25, 1629 they were defeated by fewer
Polish and imperial troops at Trzciana.
Diplomats met at Warsaw, and at the Altmark near Gdansk
on September 25 Sweden and the Poland-Lithuania signed
a truce for six years in which Sweden controlled Livonia
at the Vistula River but gave up most of Ducal Prussia
except for coastal cities.
Northern Prussia was ceded to Sweden
while Poland retained the southeast.
Sweden gained two-thirds of shipping tolls at Gdansk
and Elbing which would help finance
their participation in the Thirty Years’ War.
Between 1626 and 1630 Sweden had conscripted
an average of 10,000 men a year between the ages
of 15 and 44, though desertions increased in 1630.
Baron Johan Skytte governed Livonia 1629-33,
and Bengt Oxenstierna did so 1634-43.
On May 19, 1630 King Gustav, who was called the
“Lion of the North,” spoke to the four estates of the Riksdag
before sailing with his fleet on June 17 to fight
for the Protestant allies in the Long War.
Nine days later they landed at Peenemünde in Pomerania.
His Baltic conquests were providing
one million riksdalers a year from tolls.
His army of more than 70,000 men included 20,000 new
recruits, but he landed with only 10,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry,
and 80 new cannons with copper barrels.
On September 4 Gustav persuaded Duke Bogislaw XIV
of Pomerania to accept an alliance at Stettin, and by then
the Swedish army had gained 26,000 more soldiers from
the Stralsund garrison, mercenaries, and German recruits.
In January 1631 Swedish forces sacked two towns near
the Brandenburg border, and on the 23rd at Bärwalde
the French formed an alliance promising to pay Sweden
400,000 reichstalers a year while Sweden agreed to
maintain 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry.
The Swedish army captured Frankfurt on April 13.
An imperial army of 23,000 men led by Count Tilly attacked
the Swedes at Werben on July 22 and lost 6,000 men.
Before the major battle at Breitenfeld on September 17
Gustav put his men through a day of practice.
The Swedish army of 31,300 had 5,550 killed including
2,000 Saxons, but the imperial army of 35,000
lost 7,600 dead, 9,000 captured, 4,000 deserted,
3,400 missing, and 3,000 wounded.
In February 1632 Sweden forced Mecklenburg into
an alliance to aid them for the remainder of the war.
Gustav tolerated Calvinists and Catholics,
but he made the latter pay.
Hamburg agreed to pay 150,000 riksdalers,
Nuremberg 100,000, and Munich 300,000.
On April 15 at Rain by the River Lech Gustav’s army of
40,000 defeated 25,000 Catholic League troops led by Tilly,
but in a battle at Alte Veste on September 9
Sweden had their artillery commander Lennart Torstensson
captured, though casualties were about even.
On November 16 at Lützen each side suffered
about 5,000 casualties, and King Gustav Adolf
was shot three times and died.
The angry Swedes drove off the imperial forces,
and Wallenstein fled to Leipzig.
In his last six years Gustav had ennobled 61 commoners,
nearly half foreigners.
King Gustav and Chancellor Oxenstierna had improved
the legal system, the postal service, hospitals,
and relief for the poor.
They provided free schools
and founded the University of Dorpat in 1632.
King Gustav II Adolf’s only surviving legitimate child
was Kristina who was born on December 18, 1626,
and astrologers noted a powerful conjunction of Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn in the sign of Scorpio.
As a young child Kristina played with her cousin Karl.
Her mother was emotionally unstable, and Queen Kristina
was tutored by the theologian Johannes Matthiae Gothius
who was a friend of the great educator Comenius.
She learned Swedish, German, French, Italian, Spanish,
Latin, and later studied Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.
In 1636 Oxenstierna began teaching her politics.
When the King died, Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna
was in Germany and became head of the regency council.
He appointed Bernhard of Saxe-Weimer commander
of the Swedish allied army but remained in Germany.
The Council governed in Sweden
and convened a Riksdag in February 1633.
Oxenstierna’s brother and cousin were
given high positions in the government.
The Chancellor formed an alliance with the
German Protestant states at Heilbronn.
He insisted on continuing the war in Germany even after
the serious defeat at Nördlingen in September 1634
when Sweden’s commander Horn
was captured and held until 1642.
Oxenstierna was the chief author of Sweden’s Instrument
of Government which was adopted on July 29, 1634
and is one of the first written constitutions of the modern era.
The truce with Poland was renewed in 1635.
Oxenstierna gained a fresh subsidy from France at Wismar
in 1636 and that year made Johan Adler Salvius the top
Swedish authority in Germany before returning to Stockholm.
In 1638 Swedish colonists built Fort Kristina on the
Delaware River, but they lost this American colony
to the Dutch in September 1655.
In the Long War the Swedish allies led by Johan Banér
and Lennart Torstensson defeated the imperial army
and Johann Georg of Saxony at Wittstock on October 4, 1636.
In February 1638 the French promised to pay Sweden
one million livres in military aid to help them fight
the Habsburg Empire, and the amount was increased
when the treaty was renewed in June 1641.
Swedish victories continued at Rheinfelden on March 3 1638
and at Chemnitz on April 14, 1639.
After Banér died on May 10, 1641,
probably from liver cirrhosis,
the capable Lennart Torstensson became commander.
After the Swedish army won again at Breitenfeld
on October 23, 1642, Torstensson was sent north
where he invaded Holstein on December 12, 1643
and overcame Danish resistance in Jutland by the end
of January 1644 in what was called the Torstensson War
as well as the Hannibal War.
In February the ransomed General Horn with an army of
11,000 men captured most of Denmark’s eastern provinces
of Halland and Skane except Malmø.
On October 23 the Swedish Field Marshal Wrangel
destroyed the Danish fleet near Femern.
The French ambassador De Thuillerie mediated a peace
at Brömsebro on August 13, 1645.
The Danes gave up Halland for thirty years and ceded
to Sweden the islands of Gotland and Ösel
and Norway’s provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen.
Meanwhile Swedish victories continued in the Long War
at Jüterbog on November 23, 1644, at Jankau
on March 5, 1645, at Zusmarshausen on May 17, 1648,
and finally at Lens on August 20, 1648.
Also on July 26 the Swedish army commanded by
Field Marshal von Königsmarck captured the Kleinseite
and the royal palace of the Hradschin in Prague
and looted art and rare books until November 1,
making it the last battle of the Thirty Years’ War.
In the treaty that fall Sweden gained Pomerania, the island
of Wollin, Wismar, the Verden and Bremen bishoprics,
and small districts in northern Germany along with
600,000 riksdalers from the Emperor and 5 million
from German states they did not pay fully.
Queen Kristina was passionate about learning
religion, philosophy, literature, and art.
In 1640 she founded the Royal Academy of Turku
which became the first university in Finland at Abo.
When she reached the age of 18 in 1644,
she began to rule Sweden.
She was generous and gave large estates in Sweden
and Finland to nobles, but that year the Riksdag demanded
that the crown take back the estates sold to nobles.
Only 28% of the land was owned by the crown
with most of the remainder owned by nobles.
In 1646 Kristina urged making peace so that
Sweden could repopulate its provinces.
In January 1648 Queen Kristina appointed her cousin
Karl Gustav commander-in-chief of the Swedish army.
Norway was ruled by Denmark from 1523
until it was ceded to Sweden in 1814.
When King Frederik II of Denmark and Norway died
on April 4, 1588, his son Kristian was too young to rule.
Axel Gyldenstjerne was appointed governor-general of Norway
from 1588 to 1601, and he encouraged Peder Claussøn Friis
to translate the sagas including the Heimskringla
that tells the history of Norway’s kings.
Jens Nilsson, Bishop of Oslo 1580-1600, preserved several
manuscripts of the old sagas and wrote educational books
based on theology, sermons, and accounts of his
visiting various places and people.
Norway did not get a printing press until 1643.
Women who used their intelligence or educated themselves
were in danger of being condemned as witches and burned
as Absalon Pedersson Beyer’s widow was in Bergen in 1590.
Several witchcraft trials were held 1592-94.
Two women were burned in 1613 because men believed
they caused the destruction of a mill in Sandvik,
and other women were accused of having caused
a shipwreck by their magic and were put to death.
Punishments were severe,
and people were often executed for stealing.
Denmark’s King Kristian IV came of age
and began ruling on his own in 1596.
Three years later he made the most important
of his 26 trips to Norway.
He traveled with a squadron of warships which captured
several Dutch merchant ships sailing to Russia
by way of Vardohus, and he spent three months in Norway.
In 1602 Denmark’s King Kristian IV ordered the
Norwegian lagmaend (judges) to develop a new law code,
and they presented it to the King in 1604.
After the nobles and judges approved, it was printed
and distributed so that people could read their laws.
The Shetland and Orkney islands still used the old Norse laws.
Church laws were also revised, and the council in Stavanger
proclaimed a new church ordinance in 1607.
Hallvard Gunnarsson wrote a chronicle of Norway’s kings
in Latin verse which was published in 1606.
Jesuits were attempting to revive Catholic doctrines,
and the Norwegian bishops informed
the council in Bergen of this in 1604.
The most prominent Jesuit was Laurits Nilsson who was
called Klosterlasse and was supported by Sweden’s Johan III.
Klosterlasse was banished from Denmark in 1606,
and in 1613 several Jesuit priests in Norway were summoned
by the council in Skien and lost their jobs
and inheritance as they were exiled.
In 1611 Kristian IV declared war against Sweden
and invaded that nation with 6,000 troops.
He had Norwegians conscripted into the army
and ordered them to guard the borders but not enter Sweden.
In Trøndelag foreign mercenaries hired by Sweden
were allowed to go through their country.
The Danes seized Kalmar on May 27 but not its castle
which surrendered after the battle on July 17
in what was called the Kalmar War.
Sweden’s Gustav Adolf had a mercenary raise a force
of 1,300 men in the Netherlands and Scotland,
and about 800 of them tried to take Trondheim;
but people defended their city.
Norwegians defeated another band of Scottish
mercenaries on August 26, 1612.
The English mediated a peace treaty at Knäred
that ended the war on January 20, 1613.
Once again lives and property were destroyed
and caused higher taxes with little change in territory.
In 1614 Kristian ordered Norway and Denmark to
improve their armies by creating a national militia;
but the plan in Norway never took effect,
and the fire-arms provided were eventually sold to the people.
Jens Ågessøn Bjelke was the largest landowner in Norway
and was Chancellor from 1614 to 1648.
A company began trading with Iceland in 1619,
and the Danish West India Company began in 1625.
Kristian IV made the Soro Academy
an equestrian school in 1623.
That year silver was discovered in Kongsberg.
After a fire destroyed the city of Oslo in 1624,
King Kristian had a new city constructed west of the old one
that was called Kristiana until
it was changed back to Oslo in 1925.
The palace of Akershus was built, and its castle and the Bohus
were strengthened and protected with walls.
In 1628 a law required fourteen cities to organize companies
of a hundred men to serve as garrisons.
Men had to serve three years in the military and could
not rent or own or operate a farm until they did.
Bjelke had the first Norwegian dictionary published in 1634
to help Danes who worked in Norway.
The Greenland Company was organized in 1636 for trading
and whaling, though the Dutch and English
had more commerce with Greenland.
Hannibal Sehested was appointed
Governor-General (Statholder) of Norway in April 1642.
That year he married Kristiane,
daughter of Kristian IV and Kirsten Munk.
When Sweden invaded Denmark in 1643,
Sehested was in charge of Norway’s part
in what they called the Hannibal War.
The Norwegian militia were trained by officers
from Denmark, Germany, and Holland.
Sehested led the attack that destroyed the new city
of Vernersborg in June, and he sent Georg Reichwein
to invade Vinger and Eidskog.
The Norwegian army had 2,825 men and 18 cannons.
Many Norwegians hunted and were excellent marksmen.
In the treaty signed at Brömsebro on August 13, 1645
Norway lost the provinces of Jaemtland and Herjedalen.
Sehested controlled Norway’s army, navy, and finances,
and he organized its postal system.
He lowered taxes and granted nobles new privileges.
In 1644 copper mines were opened in Røros.
In October 1645 Sehested persuaded the estates to keep
the German cavalry that had participated in the war,
but the King canceled this in 1647.
On July 2 that year Kristian IV ordered that all taxes raised
in Norway be spent on the militia and to pay the debt.
Akershus and Trondheim maintained
3,000 soldiers each and Bohus 2,000.
In the 1590s about fifteen German ships
came to Iceland each year.
King Kristian IV aimed to end the German trade with Iceland
and notified Hamburg in his letter of July 24, 1601.
He sent another letter to the Council of Bremen.
In 1602 Kristian gave a monopoly on Iceland trade to
Copenhagen, Malmo, and Helsingor, and the Germans,
Dutch, and English turned to smuggling.
In 1596 a law made eating horse-meat punishable by a fine
and flogging, and thieves could be hanged, flogged, or branded.
In 1607 Norwegians sent Iceland a new church code,
and bishops no longer had authority.
Yet the Reformation enabled the King to have more power
and to disregard Icelandic laws.
Priests were allowed to marry, and some also kept
a concubine or had two wives.
Spanish pirates stole sheep, cattle, and money from Vestfjord
in 1614, and they came back the next year.
In 1616 King Kristian IV sent warships to protect Iceland’s
trade, and in 1619 a joint-stock company
was subscribed mostly from Copenhagen.