"Upon bread and water. They take little account of hunger and thirst, and when corn is lacking, they make their bread out of tree-bark."
"Nay," said the bishop, "a people who eat tree-bark and drink water, the devil himself would not vanquish, much less a man."
And neither were they vanquished. Like an avalanche from the mountains, they fell upon their foes, beat them with clubs, and drove them into the river. Their progress was one series of triumphs, till they placed Gustavus Vasa on the throne of Sweden.
The last outbreak of the Dalecarlians was less successful. On the 19th of June 1743, five thousand of these hardy and determined men appeared before Stockholm, bringing with them in fetters the governor of their province, and demanding the punishment of the nobles who had instigated a war with Russia, and a new election of an heir to the crown. They were not to be pacified by words; and even the next morning, when the old King Frederick, surrounded by his general and guards, rode out to harangue them, all he could obtain was the release of their prisoner. On the other hand, they seized three pieces of cannon, and dragged them to the square named after Gustavus Adolphus, where they posted themselves.
"There were eight thousand men of regular troops in Stockholm, but these were not all to be depended upon, and it was necessary to bring up some detachments of the guards. A company of Süderländers who had been ordered to cross the bridge, went right about face, as soon as they came in sight of the Dalecarlians, and did not halt till they reached the sluicegate, which had been drawn up, so that nobody might pass. It was now proclaimed with beat of drum, that those of the Dalecarlians who should not have left the city by five o'clock, would be dealt with as rebels and traitors. More than a thousand did leave, but the others stood firm. Counsellors and generals went to them, and exhorted them to obedience; but they cried out that they would make and unmake the king, according to their own good right and decree, and that if it was attempted to hinder them, the very child in the cradle should meet no mercy at their hands. To give greater weight to their words, they fired a cannon and a volley of musketry, by which a counsellor was killed.
"Orders were now given to the soldiers to fire, but they had pity on the poor peasants, and only aimed at the houses, shattering the glass in hundreds of windows. But the artillerymen were obliged to put match to touch-hole, and a murderous fire of canister did execution in the masses of the Dalecarlians. Many a white camisole was stained with the red heart's-blood of its wearer; fifty men fell dead upon the spot, eighty were wounded, and a crowd of others sprang into the Norderström, or sought to fly. The regiment of body-guards pursued them, and drove the discomfited boors into the artillery court. A severe investigation now took place, and these thirsters after liberty were punished by imprisonment and running the gauntlet. Their leader and five others were beheaded.
"The Dalecarlians are a tenacious and obstinate people, and their character is not likely to change; but God forbid that they should again deem it necessary to visit Stockholm. They were doubtless just as brave in the year 1743 as in 1521 and 1434; but though they had not altered, the times had. Civilization and cartridges are powerful checks upon undisciplined courage and an unbridled desire of liberty."
Returning from Dalecarlia to Stockholm, Mr Boas takes, not without regret, his final farewell of that city, and embarks for Gothenburg, passing through the Gotha canal, that splendid monument of Swedish industry and perseverance, which connects the Baltic with the North Sea. He passes the island of Mörkö, on which is Höningsholm Castle, where Marshal Banner was brought up. A window is pointed out in the third story of the castle, at which Banner, when a child, was once playing, when he overbalanced himself and fell out. The ground beneath was hard and rocky, but nevertheless he got up unhurt, ran into the house, and related how a gardener had saved him by catching him in his white apron. Enquiry was immediately made, but, far or near, no gardener was to be found. By an odd coincidence, Wallenstein, Banner's great opponent, when a page at Innspruck, also fell out of a high window without receiving the least injury.
On the first evening of the voyage, the steamer anchors for the night near Mem, a country-seat belonging to a certain Count Saltza, an eccentric old nobleman, who traces his descent from the time of Charles XII., and fancies himself a prophet and ghost-seer. His predictions relate usually to the royal family or country of Sweden, and are repeated from mouth to mouth throughout every province of the kingdom. And here we must retract an assertion we made some pages back, as to the possibility of our supposing this book to proceed from any other than a German pen. No one but a German would have thought it necessary or judicious to intrude his own insipid sentimentalities into a narrative of this description, and which was meant to be printed. But there is probably no conceivable subject on which a German could be set to write, in discussing which he would not manage to drag in, by neck and heels, a certain amount of sentiment or metaphysics, perhaps of both. Mr Boas, we are sorry to say, is guilty of this sin against good taste. The steamer comes to an anchor about ten o'clock, and he goes ashore with Baron K——, a friend he has picked up on board, to take a stroll in the Prophet's garden at Mem. There they encounter Mesdemoiselles Ebba and Ylfwa, lovely and romantic maidens, who sit in a bower of roses under the shadow of an umbrageous maple-tree, their arms intertwined, their eyes fixed upon a moonbeam, piping out Swedish melodies, which, to our two swains, prove seductive as the songs of a Siren. The moonbeam aforesaid is kind enough to convert into silver all the trees, bushes, leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German vision, a white bird with a yellow tuft upon its head stands sentry upon a branch beside them, the said bird being, we presume, a filthy squealing cockatoo, although Mr Boas, gay deceiver that he is, evidently wishes us to infer that it was an indigenous volatile of the phœnix tribe. Sentinel Cockatoo, however, was caught napping, and the garrison of the bower had to run for it. And now commences a series of hopes and fears, and doubts and anxieties, and sighings and perplexities, which keep the tender heart of Boas in a state of agreeable palpitation, through four or five chapters; at the end of which he steps on board the steam-boat Christiana, blows in imagination a farewell kiss to Miss Ebba, of whom, by the bye, he has never obtained more than half a glimpse, and awaking, as he tells us, from his love-dream, which we should call his nightmare, sets sail for Copenhagen.
Of the various places visited by Mr Boas during his ramble, few seem to have pleased him better than Copenhagen, and he becomes quite enthusiastic when speaking of that city, and of what he saw there. The pleasure he had in meeting Thorwaldsen is perhaps in part the cause of his remembering the Danish capital with peculiar favour. He gives various details concerning that celebrated sculptor, his character and habits, and commences the chapter, which he styles, "A Fragment of Italy in the North," with a comparison between Sweden and Denmark, two countries which, both in trifling and important matters, but especially in the character of their inhabitants, are far more dissimilar than from their juxtaposition might have been supposed. Listen to Mr Boas.