[15] Le Glay, ii. 257.
[16] Altmeyer, "Isabelle d'Autriche," 43.
BOOK II
CHRISTIAN II., KING OF DENMARK, THE FATHER OF CHRISTINA
1513-1523
I.
Christian II., King of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, as the proud title ran, was in many respects a remarkable man. His life and character have been the subject of much controversy. Some historians have held him up to admiration as a patriot and martyr who suffered for his love of freedom and justice. Others have condemned him as a cruel and vindictive tyrant, whose crimes deserved the hard fate which befell him. Both verdicts are justified in the main. On the one hand, he was an able and enlightened ruler, who protected the liberties of his poorer subjects, encouraged trade and learning, and introduced many salutary reforms. On the other, he was a man of violent passions, crafty and unscrupulous in his dealings, cruel and bloodthirsty in avenging wrongs. His career naturally invites comparison with that of Lodovico Sforza, whose son became the husband of his daughter Christina. Both Princes were men of great ability and splendid dreams. In their zeal for the promotion of commerce and agriculture, in their love of art and letters, both were in advance of the age in which they lived. Again, their vices and crimes, the cunning ways and unscrupulous measures by which they sought to attain their ends, were curiously the same. No doubt Christian II., born and bred as he was among the rude Norsemen, belonged to a coarser strain than the cultured Duke of Milan, and is hardly to be judged by the same standard. But the two Princes resembled each other closely, and the fate which eventually overtook them was practically the same. Both of these able and distinguished men lost their States in the prime of life, and were doomed to end their days in captivity. This cruel doom has atoned in a great measure for their guilt in the eyes of posterity, and even in their lifetime their hard fate aroused general compassion.
Jan., 1516] THE KING'S DOVE
Certainly no one could have foreseen the dismal fate which lay in store for Christian II. when he ascended the throne. Seldom has a new reign opened with fairer promise. His father, good King Hans, died in 1513, lamented by all his subjects, and leaving his successor a prosperous and united kingdom. Christian was thirty-two, and had already shown his courage and ability in quelling a revolt in Norway. A man of noble and commanding presence, with blue eyes and long fair hair, he seemed a born leader of men, while his keen intelligence, genial manners, and human interest in those about him, early won the affection of his subjects. Unfortunately his own passions proved his worst enemies. In Norway he had fallen in love with a beautiful girl named Dyveke—the Dove—whose mother, a designing Dutchwoman named Sigebritt Willems, kept a tavern at Bergen. On his accession he brought Dyveke and her mother to Hvidore, and gave them a house in the neighbourhood. This illicit connection excited great scandal at Court, and the Chancellor, Archbishop Walkendorf of Drondtheim, exhorted the King earnestly to put away his mistress on his marriage. Even before Isabella left Brussels, the Archbishop wrote glowing accounts of her beauty and goodness to his master, and told the King of the romantic attachment which she cherished for her unknown lord. After her arrival at Copenhagen he did his utmost to insure her comfort, and see that she was treated with proper respect.
For a time Christian seems to have been genuinely in love with his young wife, whose innocent charm won all hearts in her new home. In his anxiety to please her, he furnished his ancestral castle anew, and sent to Germany for musicians, fearing that the rude voices of Danish singers might sound harsh in her ears. A young Fleming, Cornelius Scepperus, was appointed to be his private secretary, and the Fuggers of Antwerp were invited to found a bank at Copenhagen. At the same time twenty-four Dutch families, from Waterland in Holland, were brought over in Danish ships, and induced to settle on the island of Amager, opposite the capital, in order that the royal table might be supplied with butter and cheese made in the Dutch fashion. This colony, imported by Christian II., grew and flourished, and to this day their descendants occupy Amager, where peasant women clad in the national costume of short woollen skirts, blue caps, and red ribbons, are still to be seen. Unfortunately, the influence which Sigebritt and her daughter had acquired over the King was too strong to be resisted. Before long they returned to Court, and, to the indignation of Isabella's servants, Sigebritt was appointed Mistress of her household. Rumours of the slights to which the young Queen was exposed soon reached the Netherlands, and when Maximilian informed Margaret that he intended to marry her niece Eleanor to the King of Poland, she replied with some asperity that she could only hope the marriage would turn out better than that of her unhappy sister. The Emperor expressed much surprise at these words, saying that he considered his granddaughter to be very well married, since the King of Denmark was a monarch of the proudest lineage, and endowed with noble manners and rare gifts, if his people were still somewhat rude and barbarous.[17] But, in spite of Maximilian's protests, the reports of King Christian's misconduct soon became too persistent to be ignored. When, in October, 1516, Charles, who had assumed the title of King of Spain on his grandfather Ferdinand's death, held his first Chapter of the Golden Fleece, the Knights with one accord refused to admit the King of Denmark to their Order, because he was accused of adultery and ill-treated his wife.[18] At length Maximilian was moved to take action, and wrote to his grandson Charles in sufficiently plain language, saying: