The Story of Norway

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

9. No personal or hereditary privileges shall, in future, be granted to any one.

10. Every male citizen, irrespective of birth, station, or property, shall be required, for a certain length of time, to carry arms in defence of his country.

The representatives at Eidsvold were not unaware that the step which they had taken involved war with Sweden. For Bernadotte would scarcely regard the resolutions of a deliberative assembly as an obstacle to the possession of the prize, which he had earned by assisting in the overthrow of Napoleon. In the meanwhile, it was a happy circumstance to the Norsemen, that this overthrow had not yet taken place, and that the emperor for several months kept the army of the allies busy, thereby preventing Bernadotte from turning his immediate attention to Norway. It was a surprise to him to find the Norsemen determined to defend their rights, as he imagined that their long dependence upon Denmark had accustomed them to obedience and subordination. A letter which Charles XIII. had sent them, previous to the diet at Eidsvold, offering them a constitution and a Swedish viceroy, had been received with indignation, but after the surrender of Paris (March 31st) and the abdication of the emperor, the Napoleonic drama seemed preliminarily at an end, and there were no more foreign complications to prevent the Swedes from enforcing the paragraph in the treaty of Kiel, relating to Norway. The intelligence now arrived that the great powers had promised Bernadotte to compel Norway to accept the treaty, and envoys were sent from the various courts, commanding the Norsemen forthwith to submit themselves unconditionally to the king of Sweden. This the Norsemen refused to do, and soon after a Swedish army under Bernadotte crossed the frontier. The newly elected king now began to waver, and, being destitute of warlike spirit, he ordered the surrender of the fortress Fredericksteen to the Swedish fleet, without having fired a shot in its defence. The Norwegian army, ill-provided though it was with food and ammunition, was eager for fight, but the faint-spirited king showed his generalship chiefly in retreating. A second division of the Swedish army under Gahn was beaten in Lier by the Norwegians, under Colonel Krebs, and after a second assault at Matrand was forced to retire across the frontier. It became obvious that, without bloodshed, the conquest of the country was not to be accomplished, and as the Swedes, after their German campaign, were no less desirous of peace than the Norsemen, an armistice was concluded at Moss (August 14, 1814), in accordance with the terms of which the king should summon an extraordinary Storthing or Parliament, for the negotiation of a permanent peace. This Storthing, which met October 7th, accepted King Christian Frederick's renunciation of the Norwegian crown and elected Charles XIII. king, on condition of his recognizing the independence of Norway and governing it, in accordance with the constitution given at Eidsvold. These terms Bernadotte accepted, in behalf of the king of Sweden (November 4th), and swore allegiance to the constitution. The Swedish troops then evacuated the country, and Christian Frederick returned to Denmark, where, at the death of his cousin, he became king under the name of Christian VIII. The following year a convention was negotiated with Sweden, fixing the terms of the union (Rigsakten). The Bank of Norway was established in Drontheim, and a Supreme Court in Christiania.

CHARLES XIV. JOHN. (BERNADOTTE.) KING OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN.

To all appearances Norway had now regained her independence. Considering the desperate position in which the country was placed in 1814, resisting single-handed the decree of the powers, there can be no doubt that the terms of the union were more favorable than there was reason to expect. For all that, there was one feature of it which was incompatible with the idea of independence, and that was the presence in the capital of a Swedish viceroy (Statholder), representing the authority of the king. Bernadotte, who, at the death of Charles XIII. (1818), succeeded to the throne under the name of Charles XIV. John (1818-1844), scarcely regarded, at first, the independence of Norway seriously, but rather allowed the Norsemen to deceive themselves with an illusion of liberty, as long as their illusion was harmless. But he showed plainly his irritation when he found that the Storthing began to oppose his measures, and to insist upon a stricter interpretation of the constitution. One of the first causes of contention was the question of the payment by Norway of a part of the Danish public debt which Charles John had guaranteed in the treaty of Kiel. The Storthing was of opinion that, as Norway had never accepted the treaty of Kiel, it could not be bound by any of its stipulations. A compromise was finally effected by which the king renounced his civil list from Norway for ten years for himself and his son, the crown prince, and the Storthing of 1821 agreed to pay about three million dollars. Simultaneously came the struggle about the abolition of the nobility. Three successive Storthings passed a law, abolishing noble titles and privileges, and the king, who feared a conflict with the powerful nobility of Sweden, in case he sanctioned it, made repeated efforts to induce the Storthing to abandon its position. He urged that Norway was watched by the powers of Europe, and that the democratic spirit which manifested itself in its legislative assembly would arouse suspicion and hostility abroad. The Storthing, however, remained inflexible, and finally the law was promulgated, though in a slightly modified form. Those of the privileges of the nobility which were in conflict with the constitution were forthwith abolished; their exemption from taxation and all personal privileges should cease on the demise of the nobles then living, and should not be inherited by their descendants. This postponed the final abolition of nobility for one generation.

A number of other laws and proposals for laws, concerning which the king and the Storthing differed, caused ill-feeling and excitement during the reign of Charles John. And it is indeed marvellous, considering the comparative inexperience of the representatives in political life, that they dared present so bold a front and insist so strenuously upon their rights. To these intrepid men Norway owes the position she occupies to-day. For, if they had been meek and conciliatory, accepting gratefully what the king was pleased to grant them, their country would inevitably have sunk into a provincial relation to Sweden, as it had formerly to Denmark. The manly ring and fearless self-assertion, which resound through the debates of those early Storthings, show that the ancient strength was still surviving, and could, indeed, never have been dead. No inert and degraded nation can draw such representatives from its midst; and the fact that Norway has continued to draw them, up to the present time, shows that she is truly represented by manliness and fearless vigor—that she is worthy of the liberty she gained.

The attitude which the Norwegian Storthings assumed toward the king is illustrated by the determination with which they resisted his efforts to extend the royal authority. Though he had been trained in the school of the French Revolution, Charles John was no believer in democracy or "the rights of man." He was an able ruler, a skilful diplomat, and a man of honorable intentions. But he had been too little in Norway to comprehend the spirit of the Norwegian people; and he was forced, in order to maintain his position among his brother monarchs, to sympathize with the reactionary tendencies which asserted themselves throughout Europe after the overthrow of Napoleon. In 1821 he proposed ten amendments to the constitution, which were unanimously rejected by the Storthing of 1824. Among these amendments was one giving the king an absolute instead of, as formerly, a suspensive veto; another, conferring upon him the right to appoint the presiding officer of the Storthing, and a third, authorizing him to dissolve the Storthing at pleasure. The former minister of state, Christian Krogh, gained great popularity by recommending the rejection of these propositions, and the king's persistence in bringing them up before several successive Storthings did not secure them a more favorable reception.