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Progress of the war.
Cruelty of the king.
HISTORY OF THE SWEDES.
Relief and capture of
Stockholm.
[1520—
man joined the party of Gustavus before the end
of the year, we know from his letter of thanks, for
a fief of which he received the investiture5. Both
the latter were proclaimed in 1523, to be enemies
of the realm 6, as was also the archbishop Gustavus
Trolld. He had repaired to Denmark two years
before, in order to obtain, by his personal
instances with the king, the often promised relief for
the besieged garrison of Stockholm, but was
received with coldness and reproaches.
After the baronial diet of Vadstena, the
Goth-landers acknowledged the authority of the
administrator, and the Danes having been driven out of
West-Gothland and Smaland, the seat of the war
was removed to Finland. By the commencement
of next year, the principal castles of the interior had
fallen into the hands of Gustavus, and some, as those
of Westeras and Orebro, were razed to the ground
by the exasperated peasantry. Stockholm and
Calmar, as well as Abo in Finland, yet stood out,
and by help of the reinforcement which they
received at the beginning of 1522, through the Danish
admiral, Severin Norby, the enemy were again able
to resume the offensive. By sallies from the
be-leagured capital on the seventh, eighth, and
thirteenth of April, the camp of Gustavus was set on
fire and destroyed, and for a whole month
afterwards no Swedish force was seen before the walls
of Stockholm. The besiegers of Abo were likewise
driven off, and the chief adherents of Gustavus
being obliged to flee from Finland, Arvid, bishop of
Abo, with many noble persons of both sexes,
perished at sea.
Christian himself added to the detestation with
which he was regarded in Sweden by new cruelties.
The wives and children of the most distinguished
among the barons beheaded in Stockholm had been
conveyed to Denmark, and among them the mother
and two sisters of Gustavus, whom the king, in
spite of the entreaties of his consort, threw into a
dungeon. Here they died, either by violence, as
Gustavus himself complains in his letter of 1522,
concerning the cruel oppression of king
Christian, directed to the Pope, the emperor, and all
Christian princes7, or as others assert of the
plague. An order had also been recently issued by
the king to his commanders in Sweden, to put to
death all the Swedes of distinction who had fallen
into their hands. The Chronicles say that Severin
Norby had received this order so early as the
summer of 1521, but instead of complying with it,
permitted the escape of many noblemen, who
afterwards did homage to Gustavus at Vadstena, in
order, as he expressed it, that they might rather
guard their necks like warriors, than be slaughtered
like chickens. But in Abo a new massacre was
perpetrated at the beginning of next year by lord
Thomas, the royalist commander there, who
afterwards, in an attempt to relieve Stockholm, fell with
all his ships into the hands of Gustavus, and was
hanged upon an oak in Tyunels island8.
After Severin Norby had relieved the capital,
the secretary, master Gotsclialk Ericson, wrote
thence to Christian 9, " that there were but eighty
of the burghers, for the most part Germans, who
could be counted on for the king’s service, but of
footmen and gunners in the castle there were now
850 men, well furnished with all; the peasants
were indeed weary of the war, but were still more
fearful of the king’s vengeance, and put faith in no
assurances, whence the country could only be
reduced to obedience by violent methods ; if a
sufficient force were sent, East-Gothland, Sodermanland,
and Upland would submit to the king, and his grace
could then punish the Dalecarlians and Helsingers,
who first stirred up these troubles." The governor
of the castle of Stockholm informs the king in a
report on the military occurrences of the winter, " that
his men had compelled him to consent to an increase
of pay on account of the successes they had gained;
that he had expelled from the town, or imprisoned,
the suspected Swedish burghers ; that the peasants
would rather be hanged on their own hearths than
longer endure the burdens of the war ; that
Gustavus, who had in vain tempted his fidelity, had
already sent his plate, and the chief part of his own
moveable property, to a priest in Helsingland ; he
(the governor) also transmitted an inventory of the
goods of the decapitated nobles 1."
But by the end of one month Gustavus, who in
this letter is styled "a forest thief and robber," had
again filled three camps around Stockholm with
Dalesmen and Norrlanders ; and when, pursuant to
a convention with Lubeck, he received thence, in
the month of June, an auxiliary force of ten ships, a
number that was afterwards augmented, he was
enabled to dispense with the greatest portion of his
peasants, and retained about him only those who were
young and unmarried. The assistance of the
Lu-beckers it was true was given only by halves, and
from selfish motives ; they did not forget their profit
on the arms, purchased Swedish iron and copper for
klippings, with which worthless coins they came well
provided, and exacted a dear price for their men,
ships, and military stores, refusing even, it is said,
to supply Gustavus with two pieces of cannon at a
decisive moment, although upon the proffered
security of two of the royal castles. This occurred on
occasion of a second, and this time unsuccessful,
attempt made by Norby to relieve Stockholm ;
in which he was only saved from ruin by the
refusal of the admiral of Lubeck to attack.
Meanwhile Gustavus, despite the losses which he sustained
by sallies, pushed his three camps by degrees close to
the town, then covering little more than the island
which still contains the town properly so called.
At length, after Kingsliolm2, Langholm,
Soder-malm, Waldemar’s island, now the Zoological
Gardens, had been connected by float-bridges, and the
port closed with block-houses and chains, the place
was invested on all sides. Yet it held out through
the winter, until the news of Christian’s fate, joined
5 Published by Fant; de Historicis Gustavi I.
c Ilolger Carlson reconciled himself in 1524 with Gustavus.
Nils Boson was slain in 1525 by the peasants of YVingaker.
7 See Hadorph on the Rhyme Chronicle, where the letter,
in which Gustavus styles himself governor (gubernator) of
Sweden, is dated the 29th December, 1523, but incorrectly.
8 With a bast rope. He expressed great disgust at the
method of his execution, as being an indignity. (Junker
Thomas. Junker was a title given to the sons of noblemen,
equivalent to our lord or squire. T.)
s See the letter in Hvitfeld, dated February 22, 1522.
1 Paper in the Archives of king Christian II. entitled,
" Schedule of Articles to the King’s Majesty of Denmark,
Sweden, and Norway, my most gracious Lord;" together
with a subsequent letter of April 29, from Henrik Slagheck,
perhaps a brother of Theodoric.
2 Then called Munklider (monk’s shed or barn).
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