Gustavus Vasa.
In the house of an ancient Swedish family, settled at Lindholm, in Upland, was born, in 1496, a child who was named Gustavus and who was afterwards known under the name of Gustavus Vasa. For two centuries members of this family had sat in the Council of the kingdom. It is said that the boy, when only five years old, in his play with other children, usually assumed the part of king. John II., the father of Christian II., who at this period visited his kingdom of Sweden, admired the high spirit of the lad, and giving him a gentle tap with his hand, said, ‘If thou live, thou wilt one day be a remarkable man.’ The prince would have liked even to take him with him to Denmark; but Sten Sture, the administrator of the kingdom, objected. His parents sent him to the school of Upsala; and people have long pointed out, in the neighborhood of the town, the places where Gustavus used to play with his schoolfellows. The story is still told how bravely the boy bore himself when he went to a wolf hunt. At the age of eighteen he laid aside his studies to follow the career of arms, and became one of the ornaments of the court of Sten Sture the younger. People used to say—‘What a handsome, alert, intelligent and noble young man!’ Others would add—‘God has raised him up to save his country.’ He served his first campaign with credit in the struggle of the Swedes against the partisans of Denmark; and in 1518 he bore the Swedish standard at the battle of Brannkijrka, at which the Danes were defeated and compelled to retreat. His valor, his eloquence, and his unfailing good humor were universally admired. When Christian II. announced his intention of opening negotiations with Sten Sture, but on condition that hostages should be given him, six men who were held in high honor by their countrymen, and among them Gustavus, entered a boat which was to convey them to the prince. As soon as they had put to sea, a Danish vessel of war fell on their bark, took them on board, and, the wind being favorable, carried them off prisoners into Denmark.[[391]]
Gustavus, a victim of this sudden capture, was sent into the north of Jutland, as Tausen had been, and was confined in the castle of Kalloe, under the care of one of his kinsmen, Eric Baner. He used to dine at the table of his host in company with some young Danish officers. ‘King Christian,’ said the latter, fond of playing the braggart, ‘is making preparations for a great expedition against Sweden; we shall soon have a fine St. Peter’s day with the Swedes’—(a papal bull was the cause of the war)—‘and we shall share among us the rich livings and the young girls of Sweden.’ Gustavus, worried by such talk, could no longer eat nor drink nor sleep, and employed himself night and day in devising some means of making his escape from confinement. As he was liked by every body, he had no difficulty in getting the clothes of a coarse drover; and dressed in these, one day in September, 1519, early in the morning, he escaped. He walked so fast that he accomplished that day a distance of twelve German miles. On the 30th of the month he arrived safely at Lübeck.[[392]]
Eric Baner started in pursuit of him, and reaching the same town a little later reclaimed him. But Gustavus having declared that he was a hostage and not a prisoner, the council refused to give him up. He then sojourned for three months in this Hanse town; and although it was not yet reformed he had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the doctrine of the Reformation. At the same time he was filled with abhorrence at the conduct of the pope to his fellow-countrymen. Sweden, now vanquished, lay groaning under the yoke of Christian; and his only thought was how to go to the help of his country. The magistrates of Lübeck, into whose hands he had delivered himself, gave their consent; and he embarked on board a merchant ship which was bound for Stockholm.
His Wanderings.
There were now only two towns which continued to hold out against the Danes, Stockholm and Calmar. The former was blockaded by sea and land, and Gustavus could not enter it; but Calmar being blockaded only by sea, he succeeded in making his way to a tongue of land near the walls, and entered the town on the last day of May, 1520. He found the whole town sunk into a state of despondency, and the only reply given to his generous words was a threat of taking his life. The Danish admiral, Norby, having summoned the place to surrender, Gustavus was desirous at all hazards of preserving his independence for the service of his country, and he therefore threw himself into the mountainous district of Smaland. Here he found an asylum among his father’s peasants; but here also the people were losing their courage and were ready to bow their heads under the yoke. It was in vain that Gustavus appeared among them at their gatherings. ‘Consider,’ he said to them, ‘what a feast Christian is preparing for you!’ ‘Pooh!’ they replied, ‘the king will not let us want either herrings or salt.’ This was enough for them. Others, angry with the young hero who wanted to disturb them in their peaceful solitudes, even snatched up their arrows and darts and cast them at him. His spiritless countrymen went further than this, and set a price on his head. This people, for want of energy, seemed prepared to submit to any disgrace, and carried despondency and the love of bondage to the pitch of fanaticism. The alarm caused by the Danes was universal; a panic terror had taken possession of all minds. Gustavus alone, inspired with intrepid courage, and with a manly and invincible patriotism, did not despair of raising the dead to life and of winning the victory. He quitted in disguise the district in which his liberty and even his life were continually in danger, and following the byways in order to elude his pursuers, he withdrew to the upper mountain solitudes, and in these he wandered about all the summer. He lived on roots and wild fruit; the meanest food sufficed him. But even this soon failed him; he hungered, and could not tell how to provide for his wants. Driven to extremities, and in total destitution, he betook himself without money, almost without clothes, to the estate of Tarna, in Sudermania, to the house of his brother-in-law, Joachim Brahe. For some months no one had known where he was; and his sister especially had been in a state of cruel anxiety. One fine day she saw him coming; she immediately welcomed and treated him affectionately and with all attention, and thus restored his exhausted powers. His brother-in-law was setting out to attend the coronation of Christian, to which he had been invited; Gustavus entreated him not to go, and declared that for his own part, instead of going to pay court to the Danes, his only thought was to drive them out of Sweden. ‘If I do not go in response to the king’s invitation,’ replied Joachim, ‘what fatal consequences will not my refusal involve for my wife and children? Would not your father, and even your mother too, have to pay perhaps with their lives for the affront which I should offer to this revengeful prince? As for yourself, you are free, do what you think right.’ The sister of Gustavus, who was not so cool as her husband, trembled for her brother and implored him with tears to abandon an enterprise which appeared to her to be a rebellion, and which could have no issue but his death.[[393]] Gustavus was inexorable to all her prayers. Determined to raise up Sweden again, he took leave of his brother-in-law and his sister, and for some time concealed himself on an estate of his father’s, at Raefsnaes. The ex-archbishop Ulfsson was at this time in a neighboring convent. Gustavus went there, made himself known to the prelate, and learnt from him accurately the condition of the land. The archbishop saw no chance of independence for their common country, and therefore advised him to submit to the new order of things. ‘Even your father,’ said he, ‘has acknowledged Christian, and you are included in the amnesty.’ He offered him at the same time his mediation with the king. The aged prelate and the young noble were one day together in a cell of the convent, talking over the circumstances of the time, and the old archbishop put forth all his eloquence to induce Gustavus to acknowledge the king. Suddenly a noise was heard. A man rushed in in hot haste; he was agitated, looked wild, and remained for some seconds in the presence of these two persons without being able to utter a word: his voice was stifled by the deepest emotion. He sobbed, he burst into tears; he made them understand by signs that some terrible calamity had just fallen upon their country. He was an old servant of Joachim Brahe. At last the unhappy man, coming to himself, told them that all the most eminent men of Sweden had just been massacred in the public place of Stockholm by command of Christian, who was authorized by a papal bull; and that the father and brother-in-law of Gustavus were among the victims. ‘Your father,’ said he, ‘might have saved his life by making a full and unconditional submission to Christian. The offer was made to him by the king; but he replied that he would sooner die, in God’s name, with his brothers, than be the only one spared.’[[394]] The messenger added that fresh arrests and fresh executions were continually being made. At the tale of this frightful butchery, the archbishop was dumb with horror; Gustavus trembled; but the terrible tidings did not make him despair for his country. On the contrary, they gave fresh strength to the resolution and the courage of his noble heart. He rose, left the prelate immediately, and set out on horseback to Raefsnaes, accompanied by a single attendant.
Gustavus In The Mountains.
The sorrowful feelings which at this cruel time weighed upon the heart of the young hero may be imagined. One thought alone stood out clear in his mind—Sweden must be delivered from the most barbarous tyranny. He took the road to Dalecarlia, leaving Stockholm and Upsala on the right; and, keeping clear of Hedemora and Falum, the principal towns of the province, he plunged into this Scandinavin Switzerland, a region bristling with mountains and forming in every age an asylum for refugees. He was determined to conceal himself for some time behind its torrents, its waterfalls, its lakes, its forests, and precipitous rocks. To secure his incognito, he put on the dress of a peasant of the country. The handsome young noble wore a coat of coarse woollen cloth; underneath it a long jacket and leather breeches; a sort of leather petticoat which reached to the knee, stockings as large in the lower part as in the upper, and shoes with very high heels and square toes. About the end of November he went to the Kupferberg; offered himself for a workman, and lived there wielding the axe and the spade, and supporting himself on his pitiful wages. He did not shut his eyes to the dangers which threatened him. He knew that in consequence of his escape from the prison in which Christian had immured him, he was more obnoxious to the king than the other nobles. True, an amnesty had been granted to him; but the sole object of this was doubtless to entice him to Stockholm, that he might be sacrificed there like his kinsmen and his peers. The massacre begun in the capital was continued in the provinces. One might have said that the proscriptions of Sylla were renewed. The abbot and five monks of the convent of Nidala had been drowned, by command of Christian, without any form of trial. At Jonköping Lindorm Ribbing had been executed. He had two sons, one nine years old, the other six. The elder boy was hung by his long and beautiful hair, and his head was then severed from the body by a sabre-stroke, and his clothes were covered with his blood. It was then the turn of the younger. The little boy of six said to the executioner, in his childish voice—‘Please do not soil my dress as you have done my brother’s, for mamma would be very much vexed.’ At the sound of these innocent words, the executioner flung his sword away, exclaiming—‘I will never cut off his head.’ But another headsman was ordered to the spot, who decapitated the poor child, and, by command of his superiors, laid his head at the feet of the man who had refused to put him to death. These barbarities which fell on innocent creatures show plainly the dangers which beset the energetic and dreaded Gustavus.[[395]]
The man who was to give independence and the Gospel to his native land, was at this time laboring at a humble occupation, like a peasant’s son, in a barn at Rankytta.[[396]] But it was in vain he disguised himself; his noble bearing and especially his pure speech betrayed him, and he was obliged frequently to change his abode.
Gustavus At Ornaes.