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Crusade In Russia.
The great plague.
public apologies isssued by him, couched in very
humble terms, he .attributes this evil to the ransom
of Scania; but others were inclined to lay the
blame rather upon his own carelessness which
sutiered the crown to be robbed of its proper
patrimony, in his profusion, and in that depraved
partiality to young favorites which procured him
the repulsive surname of the caresser (Smek).
His manners gave general scandal, and drew upon
him the reproaches of his contemporaries, especially
of his famous kinswoman St. Bridget. She
predicted the fate which would overtake him, saying
that he was but a child in understanding, which he
returned by calling her revelations, dreams. Under
his minority, a considerable loan had been granted
to him from the tithes, for the purpose of making
war upon the unbelieving Russians, who are still
denominated heathens by the popes themselves, as
also by the Swedish Chronicles. To fulfil this
engagement, as well as, apparently, to raise his
sinking reputation, Magnus in 1348 undertook in
person a crusade of great magnitude and cost
against Russia, offering the Russians the
alternative of death or the pope, and causing, as the
Rhyme Chronicle declares, all whom he could lay
hold of to cut off their beards and receive baptism.
But the Russians soon showed, it is added, that
their beards had grown again anew, and
surrounded the king and his army, so that he escaped
with difficulty and great loss. Count Henry of
Holstein, who accompanied him, made demands
which he was obliged to satisfy by the grant of
territorial fiefs ; the foreign mercenaries who
clamoured for their pay, plundered the country ;
fresh loans granted by the Church for the expenses
of the war 8, which still remained unpaid after the
lapse of ten years, drew down an excommunication
on his head ; and now his dominions were about to
be visited by that terrible pestilence, which in the
middle of this century, coming from the uttermost
bounds of India, traversed the world in its
devastating course.
This plague was brought from London to Bergen
in Norway by a ship, whose crew had every man
perished, the cargo being imprudently landed.
From Norway, where scarcely a third part of the
population, it is said, remained alive, the contagion
spread to Sweden, raging there with extreme
violence in 1350. This year was marked by great
drought, and the next is likewise mentioned as being
one of scarcity 9. The malady discovered itself by
spots on the breast, vomition of blood, and boils,
killing both men and animals in a fearfully short
time. Many quarters were utterly desolated 1; after
a long time churches were discovered in the midst
of forests, as is related of that in the hundred of
Eke, in Vermeland. In the mine-district of that
province, only a young man and two maidens are
said to have survived. In Upland, scarcely the
sixth part of the inhabitants was left2. The plague
reached Western Russia in the spring of 1352,
often breaking out anew in the same region
throughout an entire century, as it did more than
once in the rest of the north. Sweden was again
visited in 1360, by the same or another pestilential
disease which attacked the young more
particularly 3, and was therefore called the child’s death.
It was otherwise generally designated as the great
mortality. An ordinance of Magnus Ericson,
issued in 1350, yet remains, prescribing days of
public prayer and penance to be observed for
deliverance from the plague. In it the king
declares, that the greater part of the inhabitants in
the countries lying to the west had been swept
away by this sudden death, which was now running
through all Norway and Halland, and approaching
Sweden with such virulence and speed that, as
was notorious, people fell dead in crowds, and the
living were not able to bury the dead.
Amidst such calamities, Haco, the younger son
of Magnus (a. d. 1350), personally assumed the
goverment of the greatest part of Norway, and at
the same time his eldest brother Eric was raised
to the Swedish throne by the malcontent party. A
civil war now broke out between the son and
father, or rather between the former and Bennet
Algotson, one of the king’s youthful favourites,
who had found means likewise to insinuate himself
into the good graces of the queen, and thereby
became a duke, and the most powerful man in the
kingdom. The war terminated in the banishment
of the favourite, and Magnus now relinquished to
his son a portion of his dominions, along with the
newly acquired provinces, which he was suspected
of intending to cede to Denmark, in order to
obtain its support. KingWaldemar, the ally of Magnus,
also broke into Scania, and the war between the
father and son was about to be rekindled, when in
1359 the latter suddenly died. Eric himself
declared on his death-bed that he was conscious
that he had been poisoned by his mother’s hand 4 ;
the Icelandic annals again state that the prince,
with his wife Beatrice of Brandenbnrg, aiid two
children, fell victims to the pestilence. After
Eric’s death, Magnus was again acknowledged as
king, upon condition that the favourite should not
be recalled. This notwithstanding was done5,
and Scania, Halland, and Bleking, were actually
ceded to Denmark, in 1360, upon a promise of
slip-porting Magnus against the Swedish council. At
the very time when the rumour of this transaction
excited among the people the most bitter
exasperation against their sovereign 6, Oeland was ravaged
by the Danish king, whom Magnus called his friend,
Gottland was captured after the loss of three
battles by the peasants of the country and the
burghers of Wisby, which town was so completely
B From the computation of the amount of these loans in
silver made by the papal treasury (.see Celse, Bullarium, i.
109, 127), we learn that a mark of silver at this time
amounted to almost five marks of Swedish money.
9 S. R. S. i. 1. 29. Suhm, History of Denmark, xiii. 240.
1 Ramus in his description of Norway (Norges Beskrivelse,
166), relates after an old tradition, that Justedale in the
diocese of Bergen was now first settled by persons flying before
the infection, who all perished, one little girl only excepted,
who grew up in solitude, wild as a bird, and thence, when
she was discovered, received the name of Ripa (the grouse).
She was in time wedded, and her descendants were called
the Ripa family.
5 Vix sexta pars hoininum remansit. Script. Rer. Suec. i.
1. 29.
3 Ibid. In 1361 mention is again made of the plague in
Denmark.
4 The Rhyme Chronicle. See Torfceus, Hist. Norv. iv. 484.
5 Bengt Algotson was at this time slain.
6 The Rhyme Chronicle says that both young and old spat
upon him, pelted him with rotten cabbage, and sang
lampoons upon him.
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