170

Sigismund and the Swedish Church

[1592-3 able, Sigismund was by no means a force to be despised. The elective character of the Polish Crown and the jealousy of the nobles towards the relics of royal power combined with his Swedish birth and Jesuit education to prevent him from becoming a Polish patriot. Unrestrained by ties of nationality, he surrendered himself to the service of Rome, and at her behest continued to bear the burden of Polish kingship. So to augment his power that he might become the northern counterpart of Philip II, a monarch who should purge Poland of heresy and bring Sweden and even Russia into the fold, this was the dream of his life. The Jesuits were his counsellors, the Habsburgs his allies, and the Pope his master. Clement VIII, whose interest and influence in Poland had survived his mission of conciliation in the early days of Sigismund's rule, was not slow to insist upon the duty of converting Sweden. In the spring of 1593 he sent Bartolomeus Povsinski with a contribution of 20,000 scudi to further this aim. Sigismund was admonished to fill the vacant Swedish sees with Roman Catholics, and to provide in Stockholm, or, if that were impossible, in Poland, a Jesuit College for the Swedish youth.

Meanwhile the Swedish Church declared its Lutheranism by the Upsala Resolution, already noticed in a previous volume, which became the national covenant of the Swedish people. The fanatic Abraham Angermannus was appointed to the metropolitan see of Upsala, and all preparations were made for securing ecclesiastical guarantees from the King as a condition of his coronation. Amid the storms of the Counter-reformation, however, Sweden needed a ruler who could give her more than promises to refrain from assailing her Church. The union devised at Kalmar and upheld by the great nobles would at best revive the irresponsible aristocracy with which Gustavus had done away. It was likely to degrade Sweden to the position of a Polish dependency, to imperil her Church, and to sacrifice her empire. The natural centre of resistance to the vassalage of his country was Duke Charles, who had effected a reconciliation with the Råd and arranged, with the sanction of a small meeting of the Estates, that they should govern jointly with himself during his nephew's absence (January, 1593).

The authority of Charles, however, as none felt more keenly than himself, was indispensable to the welfare of Sweden rather than conformable to her laws. The history of the years (1592-9) during which Sigismund remained King of Sweden in name records the successive stages by which an impossible position changed into revolution. First it became clear that a genuine regency of Charles on behalf of Sigismund was impracticable. While great nobles such as Klas Fleming, the ruler of Finland, refused to recognise any authority but that of the King, Charles and the Råd tried in vain to extort from him a guarantee of the Upsala Resolution, and failing this to prevent him from setting foot in Sweden. At the end of September, 1593,

he landed at Stockholm, and Abraham Angermannus unwillingly stood face to face with the papal legate Malaspina. Sigismund found Duke, Råd, and Diet unanimous in their demand for the religious guarantee; and the favour which he could not refrain from showing to Poles and Romanists embittered the long struggle which followed. The King resisted with all his might the constitutional innovation of a guarantee prior to coronation. At last, however, he was forced to give way. He recognised the election of the heretic Archbishop, and received his crown at Upsala from the heretic Bishop of Strängnäs (February, 1594).

The victory had been won by the firmness of Charles. Scouting the King's offer of privileges for himself as the price of privileges for the Romanists, he arrayed an army at Upsala to uphold the policy of "No guarantee, no coronation." Sigismund, however, protested secretly and promised to the Papists what he had sworn to deny them. By the advice of Malaspina he conferred upon six of his dependents the dignity of Lord-Lieutenant (Ståthallåre), hoping thereby to secure protection for the Romanists and to curtail the authority of Duke and Råd. Early in August, 1594, he returned to Poland. Charles sought to frustrate the disintegrating policy of the King by renewing his alliance with the Råd and by demanding the full powers of an Administrator of the kingdom. The benefits of his rule were patent to all. He earned the honourable nickname of Peasant King (Bondekonung). He contrived to pay the army, reduced the face-value of the debased coin, founded towns, and restored Upsala as a seat of learning. In May, 1595, moreover, he concluded the Peace of Teusin with the Tsar.

At Teusin the Swedes agreed to surrender the county of Keksholm in return for the recognition by Russia of their title to Narva and Esthonia, while a boundary commission was appointed to avoid the recurrence of old disputes. The establishment of peace with Russia and perhaps also the birth of his son Gustavus Adolphus (December 9, 1594) encouraged Charles in the inevitable conflict with Sigismund, the Romanists, and the Lords-Lieutenant. In order to set his authority beyond dispute he took up the weapons of his father. First he threatened to resign, and when this no longer sufficed to bend the Råd to his will, he made a direct appeal to the people. In October, 1595, the Estates, including representatives of the army, obeyed his summons to Söderköping and granted him all that he desired. Romanist priests were expelled from the kingdom; Romanist laymen, from office; and Sigismund was to rule only through the agency of Charles and the Råd.

Though some of the nobles dissented from the resolution of Söderköping, the Duke found in it a sufficient warrant to proceed. He pressed his claims with the masterful and lawyer-like assertion which marks the Vasa. Arguing that Sigismund, who had sworn to keep the law of Sweden, had thereby abjured the right to veto what a Diet resolved, he fell upon the Romanists and the Lords-Lieutenant. Klas

172

Deposition of Sigismund in Sweden

[1597-9

Fleming and the army of Finland, however, supported the King, and Charles failed to induce the Råd to levy war against them. He therefore broke with the Råd and the great nobles, but again courted and received a mandate from the nation. In February, 1597, the Estates, disregarding the inhibition of Sigismund and the unprecedented absence of the Råd, met at Arboga and admonished all men to embrace the cause of the Duke. Soon Elfsborg and Kalmar were in his hands, and every province had endorsed the Arboga resolution. Erik Sparre, Sten Banér, and the three Gustafssons fled the country; the commandant at Kalmar swore to resist Sigismund; and the revolution reached the stage of war. Once more a Vasa called the Swedish peasants to arms against a monarchy which, although the nobles for the most part adhered to it, was in fact a foreign tyranny. In 1596-7 Klas Fleming was forced to put down two peasants' risings in East Bothnia; and in the following year the men of Dalarne tortured and murdered James Neave, a royal officer who strove to rouse them against the Duke. At Stockholm (August, 1597), at Upsala (February, 1598), and at Vadstena (June, 1598), national assemblies showed that neither the abstention of a faction nor the commands of the King could shake the alliance between Duke and people. In 1597 Charles descended upon Finland, where Stålarm had succeeded Fleming, and took Åbo. Next year Gustaf Banér and Ture Bielke fled to Denmark.

At last Sigismund resolved to assert his authority by force of arms. In July, 1598, he dispatched Stålarm with 3000 men to Gröneborg, north of Stockholm, while he himself sailed from Danzig to Kalmar. The army of Finland, which arrived first, fled at the sight of a few peasants led by two professors from Upsala. The King, however, was admitted to Kalmar and Stockholm, and many nobles embraced his He sailed northward to Stegeborg, where a long negotiation under arms with the Duke developed into a battle. The royal troops gained the upper hand; but Sigismund called a halt at the moment of victory, only to be routed a fortnight later at Stångebro (September, 1598). He surrendered five members of the Råd as the price of an armistice, and it was provided by the Treaty of Linköping that both forces should disband.

Charles kept faith; but Sigismund as usual played false. He fled to Poland, where he was received with enthusiasm, and declared that he would return to Sweden as a conqueror. This conduct only hastened his deposition. In February, 1599, an assembly of nobles and bishops at Jonköping declared that, unless the King would return to Sweden without an army or send his son Wladislav to be brought up in the evangelical faith, they could obey him no longer. In July, after Charles had stormed Kalmar, Sigismund was formally deposed by the Diet assembled at Stockholm. Three months later the conquest of Finland was complete. At the same time Narva joyfully accepted the Protestant

1599-1600]

Advent of Charles IX

173

Charles, and in April, 1600, Esthonia sought his protection against the aggressive nationalism of the Poles.

There was much, however, to mitigate and to disguise the revolution which was thus accomplished. The actual government of Sweden underwent little alteration. Sigismund had never ruled, and Charles was not yet King.. "The Hereditary Prince of the realm of Sweden and Duke of Södermanland" had defeated an attempt of his nephew and the great nobles to deprive him of the political influence which he had acquired before the death of John, and which the mass of the nation was resolved that he should retain. His ideal of government, which was wholly conservative, remained unchanged. It was the personal rule of the head of the House of Vasa, fettered only by his oath to the nation and by the law of Sweden. Valuing the principles of Gustavus more than primogeniture, he took the crown from the head of a nephew, without any ambition to place it on his own. To him the revolution was a necessary but unwelcome act of policy. The Swedish nation had none the less usurped by force rights which it had granted to the Vasa in 1544, but which in the hands of Sigismund menaced its independence and its religion. This was revolution; and it was glorious because it defied not merely Sigismund and his faction, but also the Catholic Reaction in Europe. By his championship of Protestantism, as in much else, Charles IX connects the work of the first and of the second Gustavus.

In personal character and in domestic government Charles IX was his father's heir. He showed himself, it is true, more devout but less virtuous than Gustavus, while in his dealings with men he was more upright but less adroit. Both Kings were brave, indefatigable, grasping, suspicious, violent, and practical. In husbanding the national estate, in frankly taking the people into their counsel, in swiftly overwhelming opponents, and in pressing to the utmost every royal claim, the founder and the refounder of the Vasa dynasty were alike. Gustavus, however, was compelled by circumstances to confine himself to endeavours at home in Sweden; but Charles, on the other hand, played his part on a stage enlarged by forty years of rivalry with the nations of the north. In an augmented and less secluded Sweden he practised anew the principles of his father and thus rendered possible the achievements of his son.

A severity not less than that which Gustavus had shown to pretenders was dealt out by Charles to the party of Sigismund. The victories at Kalmar and in Finland were followed by executions, among them that of the innocent son of Klas Fleming. These acts of vengeance foreshadowed the tragedy of the Råd. In February, 1600, when the Estates met at Linköping, Charles selected 153 of their number to try thirteen great nobles whom he accused of treason. The judges, though temporarily released from their allegiance to the Duke, gave sentence according to his will; and Erik Sparre, Sten and Gustaf Banér, Ture

174

War of the Swedish Succession

[1600-5

Bielke and Bengt Falk were beheaded in the market-place. Five years later, after a similar trial at Stockholm, "the old fox Hogenskild Bielke " shared their fate; and in 1604 the proscription of lesser men was completed at the Diet of Norrköping.

If Charles showed no mercy to traitors, he was himself pedantically careful of the hereditary right to the Crown. The deposition of Sigismund was conditional, and more than once a loophole was left open for the eventual succession of his heir Wladislav. The Diet of Linköping, however, provided that after five months' grace the succession should pass to Charles IX, then to Gustavus Adolphus and his heirs male, and, failing such, to Duke John of Östergötland, Sigismund's half-brother, at that time aged ten. Yet it was not until four years had elapsed, and John had publicly renounced his birthright, that Charles consented to style himself King. His coronation was deferred until 1607; the Ericsgait, his inaugural progress through the realm, until 1609. Finally, by his will Gustavus Adolphus was not to succeed him unless John should waive his claims when grown to manhood and the Estates should choose his cousin King.

As the Blood-bath of Stockholm in 1520 had removed domestic rivals from the path of Gustavus, so the Blood-bath of Linköping cleared the path of Charles IX. Secure against faction in Sweden, he was able to fling himself into the struggle with Poland, which lasted throughout his reign, and the struggle with Denmark, which threatened at the beginning and broke out at the end. In 1600 Sigismund took steps to make a national affair of his dynastic quarrel. He ceded Esthonia to Poland, but failed to win more than the passive acquiescence of the Diet in a war with Sweden at his own risk and cost. Nevertheless the Poles imprisoned the Swedish envoys; and Charles replied by invading Livonia with some 9000 men (August, 1600). By March, 1601, he was master of the lands north of the Düna. The castle of Kokenhausen and the city of Riga barred his progress, but the Livonians showed signs of sympathy with their fellow Protestants in the struggle with a Romanist Power. The peril of their province, however, roused the Poles, and in five campaigns they proved that they were still the foremost warriors of northern Europe. In 1601 they reconquered Livonia as far north as Wolmar, where they captured Karl Karlsson Gyllenhielm, the King's natural son, and Jacob de La Gardie, whose mother was the natural daughter of John III. So long as the King lived, Sigismund kept Karl Karlsson in prison, often in chains, thus provoking a fresh animosity within the House of Vasa.

In the campaigns of 1602, 1603, and 1604 Zamoyski and Chodkievicz made steady progress in recovering and defending the fortresses which dominated the exhausted plain. They penetrated into Esthonia, and the Swedes twice failed to retake Weissenstein. In 1605, therefore, after the unsuccessful general Stålarm had been condemned for treason,