CHAP. I.

MISSION OF GUSTAVUS.

31

tyrant, who would heap upon it the amplest honours, and enrich it with the largest possessions.

Every fief, however, granted to the Church, by lessening the taxable area of the country or the amount of available military service, increased the State's financial difficulties, and pro tanto the disloyalty and discontent which these engendered; and the warlike prelates of the time were no less ready than the more powerful of the secular nobles to take advantage of the discontent to avenge their own wrongs, to establish their own independence, or to gratify their own ambition.

To reduce this chaos into order and permanent obedience to one presiding head, whose interests should be bound up with those of Sweden, was the mission destined for Gustavus. Of the complicated means by which it was to be effected, of the ruin of that great establishment by the dust of whose fall the conflicting elements were partly to be tranquillized, of the pinnacle to which it was to exalt himself, he could have had, when he first girded on his sword, not the slightest conjecture; but of the mission itself it is probable that he had then, and even before, an instinctive dream.

CHAPTER II.

Ancestry of Gustavus His birth and childhood Received at the court of Sten Sturé The Archbishop before the States - Battle of Bränkyrka Treachery of the King Gustavus prisoner in Denmark Escapes to Lubeck - His wanderings — Death of the Regent Battle with the peasants Stockholm surrendered

The coronation

- Didrik Slaghec's counsel The King's continued perjuries Massacre in the capital.

GUSTAVUS VASA, or, as he was called before he became King, Gustavus Erikson-patronymics, being at that time generally used in Sweden, even among the nobility, instead of family names-was descended from an ancient and distinguished race, which, two hundred years before, had given members to the State Council. He himself was jealous of the fame of his ancestors, and took delight in representing his elevation to the throne as a restoration of the royal lines of Magnus Ladulås and Charles Knutson. The name of Vasa, derived by some from Vasa-gård in Upland, arose probably, like that of Lejonhufvud (Lion-head), Swinhufvud (Boar-head), and many others, from the device on the family escutcheon. The device represented originally either a fascine or a sheaf; and as the colour was then black and the age almost exclusively warlike, the first appears the preferable conjecture, though, when in 1540 Gustavus

CHAP. II.

HIS BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.

33

changed the colour to gold, he seems to have put the peaceful interpretation upon the ambiguous emblem.1

the

The great-grandfather of Gustavus was the Christopher Nilson who was made Riksdrots by Eric of Pomerania. His father, Eric Johanson, was a member of the State Council; and his mother, Ceciliatil-Eka, half-sister to Christina Gyllenstjerna, wife of the younger Sten Sturé. He was born at Lindholm, in Roslagen, a place then belonging to his grandmother, Sigrid Baner, twenty-one miles from Stockholm. The year of his birth is variously given by ancient writers, and even by his own contemporary relations, the dates varying from 1488 to 1497. Geijer has fixed his birth in the year 1496, because Gustavus is known to have been born "on the 12th May, which was also Ascension-day," and of all the disputed years it is only in 1496 that the festival falls on that day of the month. Several collateral circumstances, especially the dates of his going to school and leaving it, confirm this conjecture.3

The ladies who were present on the auspicious occasion saw, or fancied they saw, in the newborn infant presages of his future greatness. On his head there was a caul, which appeared to them, as it were,

1 Ziervogel contends that the device always represented a cornsheaf, "fascis segetum colligatus."-Usus Rei Nummariæ, pt. 3, p. 182.

2 Tegel gives the date 1490, which later writers have generally followed. "King Charles the Ninth makes his father two years older, and his nephew, Peter Brahé, five years younger."—Geijer, vol. ii. p. 5. Geijer, vol. ii. p. 5.

D

SADONY

He was

a helmet, on his bosom a crimson cross. named Gustavus after his maternal grandfather.'

When he was four years old, King John, on one of his last visits to Sweden, observing the boy at play with some of his companions, prophesied that he would one day be "a man," and proposed taking him to Denmark. But Sten Sturé, suspecting that the offer was made rather that the King might have a pledge of his fidelity than for Gustavus's advantage, declined it on the ground of the child's tender years, and sent him home to his father, that he might be freed from importunities, which, without betraying suspicion, it might have been difficult to resist."

In the year 1509 he was sent to school at Upsala, under one Master Ivar, a Dane, whom Gustavus hated both for his nation and his severity. He came in for his share of the latter in the shape of corporal punishment, an indignity which the "Vasa blood" angrily resented; and, Ivar having one day spoken contemptuously of the Swedes, Gustavus is said to have drawn out his sword, thrust it through the book they were reading, and quitted the school to return no more.3

Peter Brahé ap. Celsium. "Gustavus in arce nascitur Lindholmensi 12 Maii (1490) galeam in capite membraneam et rubicundam in pectore crucem de utero proferens materno hisque palam faciens prodigiis in quantum evasurus esset heroem." -Messenii Scondia Illustrata, tom. iv. p. 47.

2 Tegel, vol. i. p. 3. Dalin quotes a saying attributed to John on the occasion" that the young wolf had escaped his toils."-Vol. iii. p. 4. Tegel, vol. i. p. 3; Celsius, vol. i. p. 26; Geijer, vol. ii. p. 6.

CHAP. II.

HIS SCHOOL-DAYS.

35

While he was at Upsala, canon-law, theology, and music were his chief studies. He himself made there musical instruments of different kinds, which he kept afterwards in a separate room of Stockholm castle as memorials of his boyish ingenuity. His favourite haunts in the neighbourhood of Upsala are still upon record, and it was there that, under the bright blue sky and exhilarating influences of a northern winter, he mingled in the wolfskall, and in the other manly sports of his gallant nation.'

He used to dress, in his school-days, in a scarlet frock of English manufacture, and was at that time remarkable for his cheerful and amiable, though somewhat hasty disposition, for his ready eloquence, for his tenacious memory, and for a patience in counsel so happily blended with decision, that his projects were never prematurely attempted, nor deferred after they were ripe for execution."

All accounts agree that he was received at the Court of Sten Sturé the younger in the year 1514. He was then eighteen; and here he was placed under the quasi-tuition of Hemming Gadd, who had been Mathematicus to Pope Alexander the Third, written a history of Sweden which was much prized, who was a sworn enemy to the Danes, and an able though rusé politician. The instructions of this man, towards whom Gustavus was drawn by admiration and

Celsius, vol. i. p. 27. For a description of the wolfskall see Lloyd's Northern Field Sports,' vol. ii. p. 202.

2 Celsius, ib.