The national army was also re-established on its ancient footing. Not only were the magnates sharply reminded that they held their lands on military tenure, but the towns were also made to contribute both men and ships, and peasant levies, especially archers, were recruited from every parish. Everywhere indeed Valdemar intervened personally. The smallest detail was not beneath his notice. Thus he invented nets for catching wolves and built innumerable water-mills, “for he would not let the waters run into the sea before they had been of use to the community.” Under such a ruler law and order were speedily re-established. The popular tribunals regained their authority, and a supreme court of justice, Det Kongelige Retterting, presided over by Valdemar himself, not only punished the unruly and guarded the prerogatives of the crown, but also protected the weak and defenceless from the tyranny of the strong. Nor did Valdemar hesitate to meet his people in public and periodically render an account of his stewardship. He voluntarily resorted to the old practice of summoning national assemblies, the so-called Danehof. At the first of these assemblies held at Nyborg, Midsummer Day 1314, the bishops and councillors solemnly promised that the commonalty should enjoy all the ancient rights and privileges conceded to them by Valdemar II., and the wise provision that the Danehof should meet annually considerably strengthened its authority. The keystone to the whole constitutional system was “King Valdemar’s Charter” issued in May 1360 at the Rigsmöde, or parliament, held at Kalundborg in May 1360. This charter was practically an act of national pacification, the provisions of which king and people together undertook to enforce for the benefit of the commonweal.
The work of Valdemar was completed and consolidated by his illustrious daughter Margaret (1375-1412), whose crowning achievement was the Union of Kalmar (1397), whereby The Union of Kalmar, 1397. she sought to combine the three northern kingdoms into a single state dominated by Denmark. In any case Denmark was bound to be the only gainer by the Union. Her population was double that of the two other kingdoms combined, and neither Margaret nor her successors observed the stipulations that each country should retain its own laws and customs and be ruled by natives only. In both Norway and Sweden, therefore, the Union was highly unpopular. The Norwegian aristocracy was too weak, however, seriously to endanger the Union at any time, but Sweden was, from the first, decidedly hostile to Margaret’s whole policy. Nevertheless during her lifetime the system worked fairly well; but her pupil and successor, Eric of Pomerania, was unequal to the burden of empire and embroiled himself both with his neighbours and his subjects. The Hanseatic League, whose political ascendancy had been shaken by the Union, enraged by Eric’s efforts to bring in the Dutch as commercial rivals, as well as by the establishment of the Sound tolls, materially assisted the Holsteiners in their twenty-five years’ war with Denmark (1410-35), and Eric VII. himself was finally deposed (1439) in favour of his nephew, Christopher of Bavaria.
The deposition of Eric marks another turning-point in Danish history. It was the act not of the people but of the Rigsraad (Senate), which had inherited the authority of the Growth of the power of the nobles. ancient Danehof and, after the death of Margaret, grew steadily in power at the expense of the crown. As the government grew more and more aristocratic, the position of the peasantry steadily deteriorated. It is under Christopher that we first hear, for instance, of the Vornedskab, or patriarchal control of the landlords over their tenants, a system which degenerated into rank slavery. In Jutland, too, after the repression, in 1441, of a peasant rising, something very like serfdom was introduced.
On the death of Christopher III. without heirs, in 1448, the Rigsraad elected his distant cousin, Count Christian of Oldenburg, king; but Sweden preferred Karl Knutsson (Charles Break-up of the Union. “VIII.”), while Norway finally combined with Denmark, at the conference of Halmstad, in a double election which practically terminated the Union, though an agreement was come to that the survivor of the two kings should reign over all three kingdoms. Norway, subsequently, threw in her lot definitively with Denmark. Dissensions resulting in interminable civil wars had, even before the Union, exhausted the resources of the poorest of the three northern realms; and her ruin was completed by the ravages of the Black Death, which wiped out two-thirds of her population. Unfortunately, too, for Norway’s independence, the native gentry had gradually died out, and were succeeded by immigrant Danish fortune-hunters; native burgesses there were none, and the peasantry were mostly thralls; so that, excepting the clergy, there was no patriotic class to stand up for the national liberties.
Far otherwise was it in the wealthier kingdom of Sweden. Here the clergy and part of the nobility were favourable to the Union; but the vast majority of the people hated it as a foreign usurpation. Matters were still further complicated by the continual interference of the Hanseatic League; and Christian I. (1448-1481) and Hans (1481-1513), whose chief merit it is to have founded the Danish fleet, were, during the greater part of their reigns, only nominally kings of Sweden. Hans also received in fief the territory of Dietmarsch from the emperor, but, in attempting to subdue the hardy Dietmarschers, suffered a crushing defeat in which the national banner called “Danebrog” fell into the enemy’s hands (1500). Moreover, this defeat led to a successful rebellion in Sweden, and a long and ruinous war with Lübeck, terminated by the peace of Malmö, 1512. It was during this war that a strong Danish fleet dominated the Baltic for the first time since the age of the Valdemars.
On the succession of Hans’s son, Christian II. (1513-1523), Margaret’s splendid dream of a Scandinavian empire seemed, finally, about to be realized. The young king, a man Christian II., 1513-1523. of character and genius, had wide views and original ideas. Elected king of Denmark and Norway, he succeeded in subduing Sweden by force of arms; but he spoiled everything at the culmination of his triumph by the hideous crime and blunder known as the Stockholm massacre, which converted the politically divergent Swedish nation into the irreconcilable foe of the unional government (see [Christian II.]). Christian’s contempt of nationality in Sweden is the more remarkable as in Denmark proper he sided with the people against the aristocracy, to his own undoing in that age of privilege and prejudice. His intentions, as exhibited to his famous Landelove (National Code), were progressive and enlightened to an eminent degree; so much so, indeed, that they mystified the people as much as they alienated the patricians; but his actions were often of revolting brutality, and his whole career was vitiated by an incurable double-mindedness which provoked general distrust. Yet there is no doubt that Christian II. was a true patriot, whose ideal it was to weld the three northern kingdoms into a powerful state, independent of all foreign influences, especially of German influence as manifested in the commercial tyranny of the Hansa League. His utter failure was due, partly to the vices of an undisciplined temperament, and partly to the extraordinary difficulties of the most inscrutable period of European history, when the shrewdest heads were at fault and irreparable blunders belonged to the order of the day. That period was the period of the Reformation, which profoundly affected the politics of Scandinavia. Christian II. had always subordinated religion to politics, and was Papist or Lutheran according to circumstances. But, though he treated the Church more like a foe than a friend and was constantly at war with the Curia, he retained the Catholic form of church worship and never seems to have questioned the papal supremacy. On the flight of Christian II. and the election of his uncle, Frederick I. (1523-1533), Frederick I., 1523-1533. The Reformation. the Church resumed her jurisdiction and everything was placed on the old footing. The newly elected and still insecure German king at first remained neutral; but in the autumn of 1525 the current of Lutheranism began to run so strongly in Denmark as to threaten to whirl away every opposing obstacle. This novel and disturbing phenomenon was mainly due to the zeal and eloquence of the ex-monk Hans Tausen and his associates, or disciples, Peder Plad and Sadolin; and, in the autumn of 1526, Tausen was appointed one of the royal chaplains. The three ensuing years were especially favourable for the Reformation, as during that time the king had unlooked-for opportunities for filling the vacant episcopal sees with men after his own heart, and at heart he was a Lutheran. The reformation movement in Denmark was further promoted by Schleswig-Holstein influence. Frederick’s eldest son Duke Christian had, since 1527, resided at Haderslev, where he collected round him Lutheran teachers from Germany, and made his court the centre of the propaganda of the new doctrine. On the other hand, the Odense Recess of the 20th of August 1527, which put both confessions on a footing of equality, remained unrepealed; and so long as it remained in force, the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops, and, consequently, their authority over the “free preachers” (whose ambition convulsed all the important towns of Denmark and aimed at forcibly expelling the Catholic priests from their churches) remained valid, to the great vexation of the reformers. The inevitable ecclesiastical crisis was still further postponed by the superior stress of two urgent political events—Christian II.’s invasion of Norway (1531) and the outbreak, in 1533, of The Count’s War, 1533-36. “Grevens fejde,” or “The Count’s War” (1534-36), the count in question being Christopher of Oldenburg, great-nephew of King Christian I., whom Lübeck and her allies, on the death of Frederick I., raised up against Frederick’s son Christian III. The Catholic party and the lower orders generally took the part of Count Christopher, who acted throughout as the nominee of the captive Christian II., while the Protestant party, aided by the Holstein dukes and Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, sided with Christian III. The war ended with the capture of Copenhagen by the forces of Christian III., on the 29th of July 1536, and the triumph of so devoted a Lutheran sealed the fate of the Roman Catholic Church in Denmark, though even now it was necessary for the victorious king to proceed against the bishops and their friends by a coup d’état, engineered by his German generals the Rantzaus. The Recess of 1536 enacted that the bishops should forfeit their temporal and spiritual authority, and that all their property should be transferred to the crown for the good of the commonwealth. In the following year a Church ordinance, based upon the canons of Luther, Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, was drawn up, submitted to Luther for his approval, and promulgated on the 2nd of September 1537. On the same day seven “superintendents,” including Tausen and Sadolin, all of whom had worked zealously for the cause of the Reformation, were consecrated in place of the dethroned bishops. The position of the superintendents and of the reformed church generally was consolidated by the Articles of Ribe in 1542, and the constitution of the Danish church has practically continued the same to the present day. But Catholicism could not wholly or immediately be dislodged by the teaching of Luther. It had struck deep roots into the habits and feelings of the people, and traces of its survival were distinguishable a whole century after the triumph of the Reformation. Catholicism lingered longest in the cathedral chapters. Here were to be found men of ability proof against the eloquence of Hans Tausen or Peder Plad and quite capable of controverting their theories—men like Povl Helgesen, for instance, indisputably the greatest Danish theologian of his day, a scholar whose voice was drowned amidst the clash of conflicting creeds.
Though the Reformation at first did comparatively little for education,[1] and the whole spiritual life of Denmark was poor and feeble in consequence for at least a generation afterwards, Effects of the Reformation. the change of religion was of undeniable, if temporary, benefit to the state from the political point of view. The enormous increase of the royal revenue consequent upon the confiscation of the property of the Church could not fail to increase the financial stability of the monarchy. In particular the suppression of the monasteries benefited the crown in two ways. The old church had, indeed, frequently rendered the state considerable financial aid, but such voluntary assistance was, from the nature of the case, casual and arbitrary. Now, however, the state derived a fixed and certain revenue from the confiscated lands; and the possession of immense landed property at the same time enabled the crown advantageously to conduct the administration. The gross revenue of the state is estimated to have risen threefold. Before the Reformation the annual revenue from land averaged 400,000 bushels of corn; after the confiscations of Church property it averaged 1,200,000 bushels. The possession of a full purse materially assisted the Danish government in its domestic administration, which was indeed epoch-making. It enabled Christian III. to pay off his German mercenaries immediately after the religious coup d’état of 1536. It enabled him to prosecute shipbuilding with such energy that, by 1550, the royal fleet numbered at least thirty vessels, which were largely employed as a maritime police in the pirate-haunted Baltic and North Seas. It enabled him to create and remunerate adequately a capable official class, which proved its efficiency under the strictest supervision, and ultimately produced a whole series of great statesmen and admirals like Johan Friis, Peder Oxe, Herluf Trolle and Peder Skram. It is not too much to say that the increased revenue derived from the appropriation of Church property, intelligently applied, gave European influence of Denmark, 1544-1626. Denmark the hegemony of the North during the latter part of Christian III.’s reign, the whole reign of Frederick II. and the first twenty-five years of the reign of Christian IV., a period embracing, roughly speaking, eighty years (1544-1626). Within this period Denmark was indisputably the leading Scandinavian power. While Sweden, even after the advent of Gustavus Vasa, was still of but small account in Europe, Denmark easily held her own in Germany and elsewhere, even against Charles V., and was important enough, in 1553, to mediate a peace between the emperor and Saxony. Twice during this period Denmark and Sweden measured their strength in the open field, on the first occasion in the “Scandinavian Seven Years’ War” (1562-70), on the second in the “Kalmar War” (1611-13), and on both occasions Denmark prevailed, though the temporary advantage she gained was more than neutralized by the intense feeling of hostility which the unnatural wars, between the two kindred peoples of Scandinavia, left behind them. Still, the fact remains that, for a time, Denmark was one of the great powers of Europe. Frederick II., in his later years (1571-1588), aspired to the dominion of all the seas which washed the Scandinavian coasts, and before he died he was able to enforce the rule that all foreign ships should strike their topsails to Danish men-of-war as a token of his right to rule the northern seas. Favourable political circumstances also contributed to this general acknowledgment of Denmark’s maritime greatness. The power of the Hansa had gone; the Dutch were enfeebled by their contest with Spain; England’s sea-power was yet in the making; Spain, still the greatest of the maritime nations, was exhausting her resources in the vain effort to conquer the Dutch. Yet more even than to felicitous circumstances, Denmark owed her short-lived greatness to the great statesmen and administrators whom Frederick II. succeeded in gathering about him. Never before, since the age of Margaret, had Denmark been so well governed, never before had she possessed so many political celebrities nobly emulous for the common good.
Frederick II. was succeeded by his son Christian IV. (April 4, 1588), who attained his majority on the 17th of August 1596, at the age of nineteen. The realm which Christian IV. was Denmark at the accession of Christian IV., 1588. to govern had undergone great changes within the last two generations. Towards the south the boundaries of the Danish state remained unchanged. Levensaa and the Eider still separated Denmark from the Empire. Schleswig was recognized as a Danish fief, in contradistinction to Holstein, which owed vassalage to the Empire. The “kingdom” stretched as far as Kolding and Skedborg, where the “duchy” began; and this duchy since its amalgamation with Holstein by means of a common Landtag, and especially since the union of the dual duchy with the kingdom on almost equal terms in 1533, was, in most respects, a semi-independent state, Denmark, moreover, like Europe in general, was, politically, on the threshold of a transitional period. During the whole course of the 16th century the monarchical form of government was in every large country, with the single exception of Poland, rising on the ruins of feudalism. The great powers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries were to be the strong, highly centralized, hereditary monarchies, like France, Spain and Sweden. There seemed to be no reason why Denmark also should not become a powerful state under the guidance of a powerful monarchy, especially as the sister state of Sweden was developing into a great power under apparently identical conditions. Yet, while Sweden was surely ripening into the dominating power of northern Europe, Denmark had as surely entered upon a period of uninterrupted and apparently incurable decline. What was the cause of this anomaly? Something of course must be allowed for the superior and altogether extraordinary genius of the great princes of the house of Vasa; yet the causes of the decline of Denmark lay far deeper than this. They may roughly be summed up under two heads: the inherent weakness of an elective monarchy, and the absence of that public spirit which is based on the intimate alliance of ruler and ruled. Whilst Gustavus Vasa had leaned upon the Swedish peasantry, in other words upon the bulk of the Swedish nation, which was and continued to be an integral part of the Swedish body-politic, Christian III. on his accession had crushed the middle and lower classes in Denmark and reduced them to political insignificance. Yet it was not the king who benefited by this blunder. The Danish monarchy since the days of Margaret had continued to be purely elective; and a purely elective monarchy at that stage of the political development of Europe was a mischievous anomaly. It signified in the first place that the crown was not the highest power in the state, but was subject to the aristocratic Rigsraad, or council of state. The Rigsraad was the permanent owner of the realm and the crown-lands; the king was only their temporary administrator. If the king died before the election of his successor, the Rigsraad stepped into the king’s place. Moreover, an elective monarchy implied that, at every fresh succession, the king was liable to be bound by a new Haandfaestning, or charter. The election itself might, and did, become a mere formality; but the condition precedent of election, the acceptance of the charter, invariably limiting the royal authority, remained a reality. This period of aristocratic rule, which dates practically from the accession of Frederick I. (1523), and lasted for nearly a century and a half, is known in Danish history as Adelsvaelde, or rule of the nobles.
Again, the king was the ruler of the realm, but over a very large portion of it he had but a slight control. The crown-lands and most of the towns were under his immediate jurisdiction, but by the side of the crown-lands lay the estates of the nobility, which already comprised about one-half of the superficial area of Denmark, and were in many respects independent of the central government both as regards taxation and administration. In a word, the monarchy had to share its dominion with the nobility; and the Danish nobility in the 16th century was one of the most exclusive and selfish aristocracies in Europe, and already far advanced in decadence. Hermetically sealing itself from any intrusion from below, it deteriorated by close and constant intermarriage; and it was already, both morally and intellectually, below the level of the rest of the nation. Yet this very aristocracy, whose claim to consideration was based not upon its own achievements but upon the length of its pedigrees, insisted upon an amplification of its privileges which endangered the economical and political interests of the state and the nation. The time was close at hand when a Danish magnate was to demonstrate that he preferred the utter ruin of his country to any abatement of his own personal dignity.
All below the king and the nobility were generally classified together as “subjects.” Of these lower orders the clergy stood first in the social scale. As a spiritual estate, indeed, it had ceased to exist at the Reformation, though still represented in the Rigsdag or diet. Since then too it had become quite detached from the nobility, which ostentatiously despised the teaching profession. The clergy recruited themselves therefore from the class next below them, and looked more and more to the crown for help and protection as they drew apart from the gentry, who, moreover, as dispensers of patronage, lost no opportunity of appropriating church lands and cutting down tithes.