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llis behaviour to John,
and marriage.
mentioned the so called conspiracy of the Sture’s 7.
If such a plot really existed among the higher
nobility against the king, when would a better
opportunity of usurping the supreme power, in
defiance of him and his brothers, have presented
itself, than during the anarchical state which
followed the murders at Upsala, when Eric was
frenzied, John a captive, and Charles not yet in
possession of power ? Several of its suspected
heads still remained, and the cause of vengeance
would have been common to the principal families.
Yet no one stirred during a period of a year.
Disaffection waited for the dukes, and it was their
conspiracy which after the liberation of John
overthrew Eric.
Charles, along with duke Magnus of Saxony,
followed the king upon the 12th of August, 1567, to
Swartsioe, where he resided during all the rest of
the year. They had received a commission to
negotiate with John anent conditions of his release,
whereupon he sent a letter to the king requesting
a personal interview. Eric, who sometimes seemed
to entertain a notion that John already really
reigned, did not dare to refuse ; but his anguish
was heightened the more near the moment
approached, and when they at length actually met at
Ventholm on the 8th October, Eric threw himself
at his brother’s feet and saluted him as king.
His mind’s distemper seems now to have again
broken out in an aggravated form, for from the
1st to the 18th October no letter from the king is
to be found, and the contemporary remarks in his
Journal8 show, that he looked upon himself as a
prisoner and dependant of his brother, who mean
time was set at liberty, after having subscribed the
conditions demanded from him. These, as Eric
himself set them down, discover great confusion of
mind. Sometimes he speaks as king, sometimes
as captive, solicits among other things liberty to
dispute with John upon religion, to write his own
history according to the truth, to erect a
triumphal arch of marble, and the like. The most
important condition was that which was soon to put
an end, as well to his overtures of marriage as to
his reign ; namely, an engagement on the part of
John, that if the king should have sons by
Catharine Magnus’ daughter, they should inherit the
crown. With this woman, the best-loved of his
mistresses, Eric had at length resolved to share
both his throne and bed. Such a design was
already traceable during the previous year, when
he solicited and obtained the consent of the estates
to choose for himself a consort within the kingdom,
at his pleasure, and without regard to birth.
Having towards Christmas returned to the capital,
he on new-year’s eve laid his marriage contract
before the council for their subscriptiona. Thence-
Jncursion of the ,
Danes. io>
forward he styles Catharine queen, although their
marriage had not yet taken place ; but her claim
thereto was strengthened, as upon the 28th
February, 1568, she bore the king a son after his
departure to the army.
We may imagine how under such circumstances
the war was waged. In Livonia, Pernau was lost.
At the commencement of 1567, the Swedes
sustained an important defeat from the Poles 1. That
all was not lost here, indeed, is to be ascribed
partly to the amity which Eric had maintained
with Russia, partly to those hopes which the
inhabitants themselves cherished in favour of the
Swedish government, which from the outset had
born a good reputation in these countries2. In
the Baltic, the Swedish fleet was this year without
a single rival. But the land-war was all the more
badly carried on, and during the internal troubles
the Danes had already been enabled to attempt
what Daniel Rantzou in the autumn of 1567
accomplished, an attack on the heart of the kingdom.
" At this time, it was first in the month of
November,"—says the secretary Swen Elofson,—"tidings
came in that the foes of the Swedish monarchy,
the Danes, had taken fresh and free courage, and
done what they had not ventured earlier in this
war, namely, to cross the Holwed with their whole
army, and their invasion was made so quickly and
quietly, that ere a single word had been spoken of
it, they had begun to plunder and rob far and wide
in East-Gothland, and had pitched their leaguer
and intrenched themselves in the town of
Sken-ninge, where was the fattest of the land for corn
and plenty." While Rantzou, or the flying
burghers themselves burned the towns of
East-Gothland, and Peter Brahe and Hogenskild Bielkd3,
who were sent against the enemy, allowed
themselves to be surprised in their camp, a
considerable force had been collected in the rear of the
enemy, and the pass in the forest of Holwed so
occupied with troops and fortified with
retrenchments, sconces, and other provisions of defence,
that it was held for a settled matter that the enemy
could not escape. But, continues the author, " when
such expectations of the overthrow of the foe
were on the stretch, what befell ? King Eric took
courage and broke up from Swartsioe, on the 8th
January, 1568, minded, as he gave out, to seek the
enemy ; but in this his march, and with his evil
and perverse counsels, he spoiled every good
opportunity ; for, contrary to all advice, he gave order
that the troops should come to himself, alleging
that he was completely resolved in his own person
to deliver battle to the foe. But at the very time
when the forces, in order to meet the king,
removed from the Holwed, the enemy came upon it,
eric and his brothers.
7 The treatise cited, Examen Caussje Sturiana, by Fant,
is a defence of the reality of the conspiracy.
8 These are few, although his daily astrological
observations on the position of planets seldom fail. We quote the
following: "Oct. 8 et 9. Ivi ad Ventholmen et collocutus
sum cum meo fratre quam humillime oralis, ut veritatem
fateretur si rex esset, quod nullo modo nisi obscuris
ambagi-bus potui intelligere. Condonavit mihi autem ipse et
con-junx principissa inimicitias ex corde, manibus me palpantes.
Polliciti etiam me liberiorem vitam habiturum absque
quotidianis vexationibus." The brothers afterwards met on
the 19th and 21st October.
9 December 31. Sigillarunt consiliarii contractum matri-
monialem inter me et uxorem meam, et pro regina vera et
legitima illam habituros spoponderunt, filiosque ex
matri-monio proximos veros et legitimos regni Svetiae se agnituros
polliciti sunt. King Eric’s Journal, 1567.
1 Polackarna, the Polacks of our old writers. Trans.
2 Compare Jannau, History of Livonia and Esthonia
(Liefland and Estland), in Hupel’s Northern Miscellanies,
Riga, 1797; xv. and xvi. p. 55. One of the first acts of the
Swedish government was the prohibition of " the beating
with rods and lashing, with which the nobles of Livonia
maltreat their peasants;" and among the complaints of
Eric against Suanto Sture during his administration in the
province was this, that he had not enforced this prohibition.
3 They were afterwards taken in the Holwed.
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