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1560.; , Hostilities ’ with Russia.
gustavus vasa. the hereditary settlement.
Last years of
the king.
139
lifetime of the king himself the quarrel proceeded
no further than mutual remonstrances. The perils
of the Union, overcome by the struggles of his
youth, still disturbed his imagination in the repose
of age, and his own pen was employed in warning
his country against their urgency. All the
oppressions inflicted by Denmark on Sweden are fully set
forth in the rare metrical tract entitled " A true
answer to some passages in the Danish Chronicle 9;"
and we have the testimony of his own secretary, a
witness who is entirely worthy of credit, that it was
" composed and rhymed mostly from the king’s own
mouthThe dangers against which it calls on
the Swedes to be prepared were indeed to return,
although from another quarter, and through the
instrumentality of his own best loved son.
Iu 1554 the Russian war broke out on the
borders of Finland. Gustavus had regarded this
portion of his dominions with a paternal solicitude,
which was extended likewise to the more distant
Laplanders. He forbade the oppressions
practised by the trading peasants of Norrland and
Finland upon this wild and defenceless race, and
sought to disseminate Christianity among the Lapps
by missionaries. By the labours of Michael
Agri-cola, a Finn by birth, and the scholar of Luther
and Melanchthon, whom Gustavus appointed
ordinary of Abo, the Finlanders obtained the Bible,
Prayer-Book, Psalms, and the first books of
instruction in their language. Their manners were
still marked by much barbarity and lawlessness.
The king was obliged in 1551 to chastise the
Tavastrians2, who had surprised and burned the
newly established settlements of the Swedes,
already flourishing, in the forests of East Bothnia.
Dark and extraordinary crimes are mentioned3,
and the remoteness of situation, tempting by the
prospect of impunity, led to great outrages on the
part of the possessors of fiefs and the royal bailiffs,
as is shown by the king’s letters to the Flemings,
who then exercised great power in Finland 4. The
peace subsisting with Russia since 1510, had been
last confirmed in 1537, hut the frontier was
undefined, and in desolate Lapland it was unknown
to either side. Yet disputes speedily arose which
produced quarrels between the bailiffs respecting
the collection of the crown dues, and at length
mutual plundering, homicides, and burnings. So
early as 1545, Gustavus, in a letter to Francis I.,
complains of an inroad of the Russians into
Finland 5. This was returned with equal damage from
the Swedish side, though without the king’s orders 6,
and brought on an open war, in which the grand
master of the Livonian knights, and the king of
Poland, promised their aid to Gustavus against
the Czar Ivan Vasilievitsch II. The king himself
repaired to Finland in the following year, with a
fleet and army. But mutual devastations, from
which Finland suffered most, composed the whole
occurrences of the war. The Russians laid fruitless
siege to Wiborg with a very large army, and
carried off with them a crowd of captives. Their
chronicles relate that a man was sold for ten
copecks, and a maiden for fifteen. The war
occasioned a great outlay, and disease raged among
the soldiery. These causes, coupled with the failure
of the promised help from Livonia and Poland, led
first to a cessation of arms, and thereafter to a
peace, concluded at Moscow, (April 2, 1557,) for
forty years. The disputed boundaries were to be
determined by special commissioners.
Designs on Livonia from this side were soon to
set the whole north in flames. The Russian giant
was now beginning to struggle towards the sea,
whence fresher air might stream upon his sluggish
body. Gustavus kept aloof from the discords which
were soon engendered. His sons did not share his
own caution, and his knowledge of their character
filled him with apprehension. Heavy was the
weight of care accumulated upon his last years!
He complained that his old friends had departed,
and that he felt himself lonely in the world. He
had lost in 1551 his beloved consort Margaret
Lejonhufvud, who had borne to him ten children,
five sons, and five daughters. He married again,
after the lapse of a year, the young Catheriue
Sten-bock 7, not without some obstacles being interposed
by the clergy, as the bride was the niece of his former
wife ; but the exacerbation of his temper, which
no one could soothe in hasty moments so well as
Margaret, showed how much he was affected by the
loss he had sustained. Four of his sons, growing up,
attained man’s estate, of whom three became kings
of Sweden; and in the elder two, before their father’s
eyes, those tendencies were already unfolding,
9 Sanfardige Svar pa nagre stycker uthi then Danske
Cronike.
1 In this are printed some passages of the Danish
Rhyme-Chronicle, of which a new edition had appeared in Denmark
in 1555. Though of older date, the king seems to have
considered it as a new work. His secretary Sweno Elofson
thus writes of it: " Against this Rhyme-book king Gustavus
put forth another book and answers thereto, mostly rhymed
and composed out of his own mouth, of which I have
knowledge ." (Paralipomena, in the Nordin Manuscripts at
Upsala.) To his son John the king writes, September 23, 1558;
" The Danes have set the three crowns in their arms, and
have caused to be printed a mocking chronicle, in
revile-ment of us. Thereupon have we made answer to this
chronicle, and will let thee have some exemplars, as soon as
any are ready at the printing-house." While thus busied,
the king borrowed from the archbishop Lawrence Peterson,
a copy of Saxo Grammaticus, whom he terms, "one of the
old Danish historians named John Saxo." He sends his
tract, December 10, 1558, to his son Eric and others, with a
warning " not to show it before Danes, because it is a
mischievous piece." Two editions appeared in the above year ; it
is notwithstanding very rare. Goran Gylte, the learned
person already mentioned, disapproved of the treatise (though
without naming it) as serving only to revive old enmities.
See his letter formerly quoted in Celsii Monumenta, 53.
2 Letter to the bailiff, October 6. Register for 1551.
3 July 30, 1552, the king orders that the strictest inquiry
should be instituted in relation to a late case of poisoning in
Finland. " Such Italian (Valske) treacheries, of secret
murder and poison, are strange and singular in our
dominions." Regis.
4 The brothers Jacob and Eric Fleming. Both were
deprived of their governments. Registers for 1529 and 1540.
5 The letter is of June 1. Register for 1545. In the
preceding year a Russian embassy visited Stockholm. The
Swedish governor at Wiborg detained them on their return,
of his own impulse. Tegel, 2, 232.
6 Order to make prisoner Anders Nilson, because he and
several of his fellows had by robberies, homicides, and
burnings, provoked the Russians to attack Finland. Register for
1555. Compare Tegel, 2, 308.
7 Daughter of Gustavus Olson of Torpa, councillor of state,
and after the death of Lars Siggeson Sparre in 1554, high
marshal, and of Brita Lejonhufvud. Catherine, like
Margaret formerly, had been betrothed to another (Gustave
Johnson Roos), who yielded his pretensions to those of the
king, and, as on the previous occasion, was united to her
sister.
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