Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Steno Sturé the Elder. King John. Suanto Sturé. Steno Sturé the Younger, and Christian the Tyrant. A.D. 1470—1520
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Cruelties of the king.
His departure.
tive of Sigbrit, a Dutch huckster, who by the beauty
of her daughter had gained an ascendant over the
king’s mind, which she had tact enough to preserve
during his whole reign
On the third day of the solemnities which
followed the coronation, the gates of the castle of
Stockholm were unexpectedly barred, and the
archbishop Gustavus Trolle came into the king’s
presence, to complain of the violences and injuries
suffered by himself and the arcliiepiscopal see of
Upsala, at the hands of the deceased administrator,
for which he now demanded satisfaction. He was
probably himself ignorant of the atrocities, for the
perpetration of which he was to be used as an
instrument. He is said, as we may conclude from a
contemporary account, to have maintained that the
question of punishment and compensation must be
referred to Rome, but the king negatived his
proposal, declaring that the matter should be
adjudicated forthwith. As the prelate’s charges were
really directed against Steno Sture, his widow
Christina Gyllenstierna stood up and appealed to
the resolution of the estates, whereby Gustavus
Trolls was unanimously declared to have forfeited
his dignity, and which the principal spiritual and
secular lords had subscribed under an express
obligation to common responsibility. Such of these
as were now present, and among them two bishops,
were immediately seized and thrown into prison5 ;
the remainder were confined over night in the
castle, the clergy in a separate chamber. Next
morning, the question was proposed to them,
whether it were not heresy to confederate and conspire
against the holy see of Rome, which they were
constrained to answer in the affirmative. This was
regarded as a delivery of sentence and
condemnation. On the same morning public proclamation
was made, that the inhabitants of Stockholm should
not quit their houses before the signal was given.
It was the eighth of November, 1520. Towards
mid-day the burghers were summoned to the great
market-place, upon which the captives were now
led forth ; Matthias, bishop of Strengness, who had
laboured more to advance the Danish party than any
other man in Sweden,—Vincent, bishop of Skara,—
twelve temporal lords, most of them councillors of
state, and lastly, the burgomasters and council of
Stockholm, with many of the burgesses. Nicholas
Lycke, a Danish knight, spoke to the people, and
exhorted them not to be alarmed at what was about
to happen, saying that the archbishop Gustavus
Trolld had thrice adjured the king upon his knees
to suffer that this punishment should overtake the
guilty. At this bishop Vincent raised his voice,
exclaiming that nothing of it was true, and that
the king was a traitor against the Swedes. Several
of the captives began to call out to the same effect,
but were silenced by the executioners. All were
beheaded ; the consolations of religion being denied
them. Handicraftsmen were dragged from their
work to the slaughter ; and bystanders were also
pulled into the circle by the headsmen, who did
their bloody office upon them, because they had
been seen to weep. The brothers Olave and
Laurence Peterson escaped a like fate only from
the circumstance that a German who had known
them in Wittenberg protested that they were not
Swedes. Olaus Magnus saw ninety-four persons
beheaded0 ; others were hanged or butchered with
the keenest torments. During the night, the houses
of the killed were plundered, and the women
outraged. The assassinations were continued for a
second and third day, after public proclamation of
peace and security had enticed new victims from
their retreat. The corpses lay for three days on the
market-place, before they were carried out of the
town, and burned at Sodermalm 7. Steno Sture"s
body, with that of one of his children, was torn
from the grave and cast upon the funeral pile.
Before the massacre had terminated, the king
despatched letters to all the provinces 8, purporting
that he had caused Steno Sturm’s chief abettors to be
punished as notorious heretics, placed under the ban
of the church, according to the sentence of the
bishops, prelates, and wisest men of Sweden, and that
he would hereafter govern the kingdom in peace after
the laws of St. Eric. Meauwhile the massacre, in
conformity with his command, was extended to
Finland, where Hemming Gadd was not saved by
his defection from laying his head, at the age of
eighty, upon the block. The king’s whole progress
from Stockholm continued to be marked by the
same cruelties, not even the innocence of childhood
being spared. More than six hundred heads had
fallen before he quitted the Swedish territory, at
the beginning of 1521 9.
While these horrors were being acted, a noble
youth, wandering in the forests of Dalecarlia,
fleeing before the emissaries of the tyrant, and hidden
from his pursuers, sometimes in a rick of straw,
sometimes under fallen trees, or in cellars and
mines, was preserved by Providence, whose great
soul was already meditating the salvation of his
country, and eventually achieved it by the aid of
"God, and Sweden’s Commonalty 1."
4 Memoirs for the History of Scandinavia, Stockholm,
1817, iii 6.
5 B:shop Hans Brask of Linkoping, who had secretly
placed a protest under the seal with which he had ratified
the above named act, was left free, as was Otlio, Bishop of
Westeras, who had supported the archbishop in his
accusation.
13 Me vidente ac trepidante, he says himself.
7 The south suburb, where St. Catherine’s church now
stands.
a November 9, 1520.
s Olave Peterson. (Some of Christian’s retinue were
heard to say, that the Swedish peasants might thenceforth
follow the plough with one hand and a wooden leg. In all
the towns through which the king’s route lay, gibbets were
erected before his arrival in the market-place ; so in
Linkoping, where he kept his Christmas. In the monastery of
Nydala, the king caused the abbot and five monks to be
bound and thrown into the water, because they had
concealed a portion of their stores in the woods; the abbot, a
young active man, scrambled out, but was unmercifully
thrust back again. Dalilmann’s History of Denmark, iii.
348—9. T.)
1 Device of Gustavus I.
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