1591-9]

Character of Christian IV.-Norway

565

and, when he died, the preacher could find no parallel to him save David of Israel. Yet the royal duties which he left undone were more weighty than those which he performed, and he involved his people in disasters which rendered his labours futile. A calm comparison of his grandiose policy with his reckless neglect of the means indispensable to its fulfilment must result in enrolling him with Christian II as one of the very worst Kings of Denmark of modern history.

His character was as full of contradictions as his career. He was refined in taste and foul in speech, industrious and frivolous, grasping and extravagant, pious and dissolute. Even in that profligate age his "stark rouses" and other breaches of the moral law astonished travellers from all Europe. Yet he hazarded his life to attend divine service when in the grip of disease, and he lived in full assurance that at Rotenburg Christ had appeared to him. His popular habits concealed, but did not banish, the deep-lying aristocratic prejudices which as a Duke of Holstein he shared with the magnates of northern Germany. He danced at peasant weddings, scaled a tottering church-steeple to see to its repairs, and rose at daybreak to work as foreman on the royal wharf; but he was also the King who enlarged the hunting-grounds of the Crown, who viewed with equanimity the monstrous privileges of the nobles, who set his face against Diets, who admired the Spanish monarchy, and who could never understand that burgher corporations might have rights. He seems in truth to have been the victim of a feverish energy which banished all power of reflexion. Alike in peace and in war, he took much upon himself, but in neither field of government could he formulate a policy, organise an administration, or even communicate to his fellow-labourers a spark of his own zeal. Denmark paid dear for his blunders; but in the hour of peril he showed activity and courage which in some measure redeemed them.

At his accession to full power in 1596 Christian was a youth of nineteen, masterful, adventurous, and enamoured of the sea. All his chief passions he was able to gratify in Norway, a land which the royal House may almost be said to have now discovered anew. In 1591 he made the first of more than a score of voyages thither, and amid scenes of revelry entered on a lifelong endeavour for the welfare of the Norwegian people. Unhampered there by an indigenous caste of nobles, he chastised tyrannical officials, established silver and copper mines, and founded a series of towns, of which the chief, Christiania, bears his name. His belief in the potential wealth of Norway heightened his sensitiveness to the claims of Charles IX of Sweden upon districts in the extreme north, and helped to precipitate the War of Kalmar in 1611.

War with Sweden, however, ensued only after a long struggle in Denmark. From the accession of Charles IX in 1599, Christian felt acutely that, with so violent an anti-Jute on the throne at Stockholm,

566

Relations of Christian IV with Sweden

[1601-43

nothing could be more humiliating and perilous than to allow the decline of the Danish forces to continue. He did all that lay in his power to prepare for a conflict which appealed to his martial instinct and which seemed to promise him, as his power increased, no less a prize than the Crown of Sweden. He accumulated treasure, created a fleet, exhorted the Danish nobles to take up arms, and cultivated the friendship of his brothers-in-law in Brandenburg and in Scotland. For a full decade, however, his plans were frustrated by the Raad. He reduced its numbers and left great offices of State unfilled, but he was powerless to deprive it of the moral support of an aristocracy which dreaded both the burden of war and the danger that war might augment the power of the Crown. In 1601, indeed, the Raad met Christian's arguments by propounding a formidable dilemma. Sweden, they rightly maintained, was by nature a realm most easy to defend against invasion; for a small army would be crushed there and a large one would starve. Their military insight was vindicated by the event. In 1611, however, Christian succeeded in forcing Denmark into a war which, in spite of the prowess of the King and his mercenaries, brought her little permanent advantage. The War of Kalmar none the less demonstrated the value of the royal fleet and the lack of a native territorial army. In 1614 Christian endeavoured to organise at least a system of home defence, but the development of the art of war and the selfishness of the nobles combined to frustrate his attempts to create even a small permanent national militia. A foreign army hired and controlled by the King was the natural outcome of the faults of Denmark.

It may not unreasonably be supposed that the ruin of his designs on the Crown of Sweden threw Christian with heightened zest into that policy of aggrandisement in Germany which, in spite of the opposition of the Raad, led to his participation in the Thirty Years' War. The ambition of the King of Denmark to intervene in the settlement of the Empire at least contributed to the maintenance of peace in Scandinavia.

The rivalry between Christian and Gustavus, accentuated by the arrogant claim of the master of the Sound to control the Baltic, revealed itself in many acts of diplomatic and commercial unfriendliness; but in 1624 peace was formally prolonged at a meeting on the border of the two kingdoms. So long as the forces of the Counter-reformation triumphed, moreover, Denmark and Sweden were forced by their common danger into a reluctant and jealous entente. Thirty years of peace between the Scandinavian kingdoms followed the War of Kalmar.

This period, 1613-43, in which Denmark for the last time essayed to play the part of a Great Power, revealed but did not remedy the flaws in her constitution. The chief of these were still the irresponsible ascendancy of the nobles and the half-independent position of the King as a foreign potentate. This position, which had enabled Christian to force the War of Kalmar upon the Danes, by declaring that he would in

1604-43]

Failure of Christian IV as a reformer

567

any case make war as Duke of Holstein, enabled the Raad to treat his intervention in Germany as primarily an affair not of Denmark but only of the Lower Saxon Circle. In the hour of disaster they demurred to receiving the royal mercenaries into the islands, while the peasants of the northernmost part of Jutland saved their crops and homesteads by cutting off the retreat thither of 3000 of Christian's horse (October, 1627). Much might have been pardoned in a King who would have set himself to wrest power from the nobles and to redeem from political insignificance the other classes within the State. For this, however, Christian was too haughty or too short-sighted; and in such skirmishes as happened to arise the nobles proved easily victorious. In 1604 the King convoked representatives of the Jutish towns to confer with him at Horsens; but in deference to the wishes of the Raad and of the nobles he cancelled the invitation. Twenty-five years later the men of Jutland laid before the King an indictment against the nobles which emphasised the grievances of burghers and peasants alike. In 1636, however, a royal ordinance forbade all such complaints to the King unless they had been endorsed by the lord of the fief from which they came. Particular critics were severely dealt with. The theologian Dybvad was deprived of his professorship because of an academic attack upon the freedom of the nobles from taxation. His son, who declared that until the nobles were thrust aside the King could be King only in name, was condemned in 1620 to close imprisonment for life. Christian's proposals, in 1634, for the abolition of serfage in eastern Denmark proved futile; and his policy of marrying his numerous daughters to the chief nobles of the land was not calculated to assist the Crown in any future campaign against the caste as a whole.

Nor can it be said that Christian's administrative labours, laudable as they were, remedied the chief disease of the Danish body politic. Minor administrative duties, indeed, he performed with so much zeal as to see that his pigs were fed with green-meat in the dog-days. He built castles and towns, founded colleges, organised commercial companies, developed posts, promoted manufactures, invited useful immigrants into the kingdom, and sought profit in regions as far distant as Greenland and Ceylon. This prolonged and well-meant activity meant something to the towns, much to the peasants on the Crown estates, most of all perhaps in the fulness of time to the monarchy itself. But, where constructive legislation was essential, there Christian's abilities proved inadequate. He tried in vain to reform the government of the towns, and to secure the emancipation of the peasants from feudal dependence. Heavy taxes pressed upon the commons of Denmark and Norway for many years without bringing compensation in the shape of a formidable standing army, while all foreign nations were estranged by the spoliation of their merchants in the Sound. Towards Sweden, although the Raad consistently advocated a policy of friendship,

568

Oxenstierna as the successor of Gustavus [1632–43

Christian showed in many ways an ill-will which Axel Oxenstierna was of all men the least likely to condone. The descent of the Swedish hosts upon Denmark in 1643 was thus provoked by her King. It found her isolated and unprepared; it left her humiliated and dismembered.

The fall of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen (1632) had left the Swedish Government face to face with two great problems. The German war had never excited the enthusiasm of the people at large, and the Swedish Constitution was still undefined. Forty-two years had passed by since Sweden had enjoyed more than glimpses of peace, and in such a period no class could escape from grave sacrifices of blood and treasure. The nobles resented the weakening of their cherished privilege, for, as was said with justice, "this they thought to be freedom, to give nothing to the Crown." The peasants showed their discontent by struggling more and more frequently to evade the conscription, on several occasions even by revolt. None but a King, and no King save another Gustavus, could hope to inspire the nation with a spirit of sacrifice adequate to the task which it had undertaken.

Nor was it entirely clear upon whom power ought now to devolve. Christina, the only child of Gustavus, was not yet six years of age. Some of the Swedes, the more readily that the Polish Vasa stoutly maintained their title by right of birth, were still disposed to regard the throne as elective. The Queen-Mother, the hysterical Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, and the Count Palatine John Casimir, the brother-inlaw and Minister of Gustavus, presented embarrassing claims to influence the Government. The new method of administration by "colleges" or boards could show hardly any other title to existence than the will of the late King, while, as a corporate body, the Råd, or Council of High Officials and Statesmen, possessed only an ill-defined authority.

At this crisis, intensified as it was by a desperate war, Sweden was saved by the reputation and ability of the Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna. Without leaving Germany, where he watched over the war and the Swedish provinces, he piloted the ship of state through the shoals. Thanks to his counsel, the Diet of 1633 authorised the Råd to govern the realm in the name of Queen Christina; and in 1634 a constitution drawn up by him was accepted by both Råd and Diet. The "Form of Government" of 1634 is a great national memorial of Gustavus as a constitutional statesman. Invoking his authority, prefaced by words supposed to be his, it aims with success at making permanent his principles of administration and his administrative machine. It serves also as a measure of the swift progress of Sweden from the almost patriarchal government of Charles IX to a fixed and elaborate constitution which served as a pattern to other lands. Attributing the past sufferings of the realm to disputed successions, religious disunion, and the lack of an organised government which might supplement and modulate the exercise of royal power, the Form proceeds to remedy the last of these defects. The

1634-44] "Form of Government" of 1634.-The Regency 569

King, it is clearly enunciated, is and must be the supreme governor. The business of the realm is, however, too great for him to transact alone; and he therefore appoints helpers in accordance with the law and the needs of the land and his own good pleasure. These helpers are the officials, from the five great officers of State and their colleagues in the Råd down to the National Huntsman, who already existed and whose status and competence now receive the definition and sanction of the law. Henceforward, whenever necessary, the Steward, Marshal, Admiral, Chancellor, and Treasurer were empowered collectively to supply the place of the King. Save that the number 25 was suggested as its normal complement, no attempt was made to deprive the Råd of the elasticity desirable in a body whose great functions were to advise the King, to provide him with confidential envoys, and to influence the Diet on his behalf. In sharp contrast with the freedom conceded to the central power, the five "colleges" which shared the burden of administration were carefully circumscribed. These were, first, the High Court with its branches at Stockholm, Åbo, Dorpat, and Jonköping, which was competent to deal with all ordinary cases at law, then the War Office, the Admiralty, the Chancery, through which diplomatic correspondence passed and in which all official documents were drawn up, and lastly the Treasury. No member of a "college" might exercise individually the authority which belonged to the "college" as a whole, and no "college" might encroach upon the domain of another. Sweden thus gained a true civil service, of which every member was a pillar of the State as well as a servant of the King. Nobles by birth, they acquired from their calling the corporate feeling of a bureaucracy.

For twelve years from the death of Gustavus, Axel Oxenstierna, though not unopposed in the Råd, controlled the foreign and domestic policy of Sweden. From 1636, when he quitted Germany, to the close of 1644, when the minority of Queen Christina ceased, his chancellorship was in reality kingship. He was surrounded and supported by nobles of the new generation whom Gustavus had inspired and trained for service in peace and war. His own brother was Steward and his cousin Treasurer, while in Jacob de La Gardie, Karl Karlsson Gyllenhielm, Klas Fleming, and Per Brahe he possessed colleagues as able in administration as their contemporaries John Banér and Leonard Torstensson in strategy. Sweden was fortunate moreover in enlisting the services of the Walloon, Louis de Geer, who made his adopted country eminent in the manufacture of munitions of war.

In its main features a continuation of the foregoing reign, the policy of the Regency was not untinged by the opinions of the Chancellor. While he pressed forward the war and the work of developing the country and promoting education, Oxenstierna showed himself less eager than Gustavus to meet the people face to face, but perhaps more eager to advance religious toleration and freedom of trade within the realm.