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332
Immediate effects of the
peace.
HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Consequences of the aliena-
tion of crown estates.
[1644—
ternal commotions of France might perhaps induce
tlie emperor to a new war’; "but rather," the
queen writes to Charles Gustavus,
" we beg by all
that is holy, that your loviugness will not be
restrained by causes of hindrance interposed, but
in God’s name make an end without delay of this
long protracted treaty ^." The completion of the
peace was settled by the Recess of Execution in
Nuremberg, 1650. The pacification of Westphalia
determined for a long time the political arrange-
ment of Europe. We know that violence provokes
violence ;
but if, fixing our eyes on the many years’
devastations of this war, we inquire whether it
were mainly urged on account of religion, we must
answer with Axel Oxenstierna, no’ ! and call to
mind an oriental proverb :
" What princes take,
they harry ;
what God takes, he heals *."
Peace, however wishfully expected, has often,
no less tiian war, its initial moments of embarrass-
ment. It is like a sudden change in the way of
life. Forces, whose direction has long been ex-
ternal, are thrown back within the body. If to
this we add, that men are in general tolerant
of those necessities which are keenly enough felt in
war, but know no bounds to their wishes when
these have scope to expatiate, it will appear that
peace, not less than war, must try the strength of
a government. In Sweden this great conflict,
wherein the country had borne the most honourable
share, left behind it such profiund intei-nal de-
rangements, that Christina ended by committing
their adjustment to the hand of another. The
causes of this resolve lay as well in her own
personal position, as in the general situation of her
kingdotn.
The derangements mentioned above, were partly
the necessary results of a war, of which it has
been rightly said,
" that it was disproportioned to
the forces of the country." A supportable dis-
tribution of public burdens is in such a case an
insolyible problem ;
but whether supportable or
’ To the commissaries in Osnaburg, Feb. 10, 1649. Reg.
The queen enjoins Charles Gustavus, on the 10th of March
of the same year, to try to hinder Turenne, who was on the
side of the parliament, and wished to lead his army against
Paris. Lieutenant-general Erlach writes on this subject to
Wrangel, May 2, 1649: " As the design of M. de Turenne
had neither justice nor grounds, I opposed it wilh so much
success, that the marshal has no more than a handful of
people al’.out him." After the court in 1650 had caused
Conde to be arrested, Turenne solicited Wrangel’s help to
liberate the prince.
" I doubt not," he writes, "that your
excellency has learned the arrest of the prince. I hope your
excellency will be touched by his misfortune, and that you
will do me the favour of sending to nie the officers who
would wish to serve a cause so just." V.’rangel received for
his refusal a letter of thanks from Lewis XIV. from Dijon,
March 27, 1650: "
Having been apprized how you have re-
butted the intrigues of Marshal de Turenne, who desired to
be assisted with troops against my service, I write you this
letter by advice of the queen-regent, madam my mother, to
express to you what satisfaction I have felt at the effects of
your good disposition." (Ayant sceu comme vous avez re-
butte, &c.) The original is in the correspondence of C. G.
Wrangel, in Sko-Cloisler.
6 To Charles Gustavus, Jan. 19 and 26, 1650. Reg. On
the 7th May of the preceding year, she had written to him,
that she would gladly see him erect a statue on the spot
where her father had fallen. ’
’ " The principal aim of the German war was by no means ’
the defence of religion, whose weapons are spiritual, as
prayers and tears; but that the realm of Sweden and our
not, ju.stice demands that it should be equal ; and
even in the most difficult circumstances, it is the
strictest justice alone which saves. We may es-
cape this necessity by a false forbearance; but this
brings its own penalty. The expedient which the
Administration of Guardians adopted for lightening
these burdens by an alienation of the crown es-
tates, as the foreign subsidies were inadequate,
and they did not dare to augment the imposts, con-
tained alike lenity and injustice ;
less in itself—
for the chancellor’s maxim, that estates are more
j)rofitable in the hands of jn-ivate persons than in
thiise of the crown, has much in its favour—than
throtigh the conditifins attached to the alienation,
and by the extension given to the denomination
" crown-estates." In the former respect our at-
tention is fixed by the circumstance, that these
estates could only be alienated to the nobility^; in
the latter it should be remarked that the alienated
properties comprised not only domains of the
crown, but also the crown-rents of the tax-pay-
ing peasants, who in this manner were brought
under the superiority of the nobles, and thus trans-
formed from immediate into mediate subjects. It
is indeed specified, that the rents alone of the
assessable estates should be alienated ;
but the
relation in which the nobleman was thus placed,
left him but too much op[)(irtuiiity to encroach
upon and annul the ancient right of the Swedish
odal yeoman as possessor of the soil. Neither
soft nor hard words were spared to bring the
latter entirely under the sway of the gentry, as is
shown by the repeated complaints of the yeomen at
the diets. Nor were there wanting those who
maintained, that all liability to land-tax had its
origin in the crown’s primary right of property in
the soil, wherefore the transfer of the rents to the
nobility must bring with it a silent transfer of the
soil itself. This assertion was even so loudly
maintained that it called forth a special refutation’.
partners in religion might sit in security, as well in their
ecclesiastical as in their political state." Axel Oxenstierna
in the council, 1637. Palmsk. MS.
s " Wer ist der wahre Kiinig? Gott allein.
Wo Konige ein Land einnahmen,
Verwiisten sie’s, so weit sie kamen.
Gott heilt ein Herz, so weit er es nimmt ein."
" Who is the true King? God alone.
The Kings of Earth, when they a land invade,
Far and wide desolation spread.
God heals a heart that he takes for his own."
Friedrich Ruckert, Traditional sayings of the East. (Spriiche,
e’i.C.)
9 So strictly was this enforced, that although great part of
the estates was alienated for the payment of old claims, the
ministry, as appears by their letter of July 14, 1642, to the
bt)ard of treasury, gave orders that no unnoble person should
in this manner receive satisfaction of his claim, unless it
had previously been transferred to some one of the nobles.
I "
Irrefragable Proofs against the right of the nobirilyover
taxed estates," written by Ehrensten, afterwards councillor
of chancery, in 1647, although not mentioned in his autobio-
graphy. The treatise was printed at Stockholm, in 1769.
He lost much subsequently, by the reduction of king
Charles XL, which caused the author of the Observations,
included in the 9lh volume of the Memoirs for the History
of Scandinavia, to say :
" The official Ehrensten had written
in youth, as an unnoble person, most severely against the
land-claims of the nobles; but when the king’s bounties to
himself were in question, the shell gave another sound."
p. 147.
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