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226 Improvement and extension
of the system.
HISTORY OF THE SWEDES.
Resources of Ihe country.
Extraordinary means. [1611—
is their jirinie necessity, so that its uses could not
be supplied by money, even if we had it. This
most plainly appears from our military institutes.
How might the soldiers have their sustenance and
equipment if these were not furnished from the
land? And this is one of the main institutes which
king Gustavus Adolphus, to his great renown,
planted in the realm ;
this have other nations
sought to imitate, but thus far without success ’."
" The same monarch," he adds,
"
disposed the sol-
diery througiiout the provinces ’." Charles IX.,
who arranged the lodgment and stipend of the
cavalry 9, conceded to tlie recruit the eighth part
of a hyde, free of all intermediate imposts, and
a rent of one dollar from some j)articular farm-
stead. Gustavus Adolphus extended this conces-
sion genei’ally to all regiments, though with some
variations*. Superior and inferior officers, even
to tlie corporal, with the chaplains (four to a regi-
ment), clerks, servitors of the military court, bar-
ber chirurgeons, and provosts, obtained additional
lands and i)ay ^. Even in his time provinces occa-
sionally made contracts with the crown, to avoid
the levies. Thus the Westerdales petitioned in
1629, that their prior contract of February 14,
1 62.*}, might be continued. The Easterdales made
a like request in 1630, which was granted with the
addition, that if they would pay the rote-money to
the king, he would instead supply their soldiers,
like others, with victuals and clothing ’. But the
dreaded levies did not generally cease until the
days of Charles XI. ;
the militia contracts then
entered into with the provinces were made yet
more burdensome by the frequent returns of the
conscription under Charles XII. The sufferings
of Sweden in those times and during wars of such
long continuance pass our conception.
The resources of the country appear to have
been little answerable to its great undertakings.
Tlie state of the year 1620 *
makes the revenues
of the crown in money and produce (the latter,
however, not fully detailed) amount altogether to
1,280,652 Swedish dollars, equivalent nearly to
853,768 rix-doUars specie, or 2,276,714 of the
present rix-doliars banco ^. They indeed consider-
7 Palmsk. MSS. t. 190.
" Ibid. Observations in the council, 1647.
9 His successor regulated the system anew. (Compare
Hallenberg, iv. 730.) The militia of the horse-service was
partly incorporated with the cavalry thus distributed. A
captain was invested with a fief, and was bound to render
service for four horses, a lieutenant and ensign for three, a
chaplain and clerk for one.
1
"Since the privates of foot in Finland are not so veil
provided for with an eighth of a hyde as those in Sweden,
and humbly entreat some immunity, let them be freed from
the cattle-tax, and clear as much wild land as they will,
with exemption from rent for a certain number of years."
Letters of the king, April 23, 1627. Horsemen may hold
their farms free of portage and purveyance. Letter of
April 26, 1C27. Reg.
2 See the distribution of the Suthermanland regiment in
1632, in the history above cited.
3 See the king’s letters of February 5, 1629, and Feb. 13,
1630, in the Registers for those years. In 1621, one division
of Wustmanland, to avoid the levy, entered into a contract,
agreeably to which every six households were to furnish a
soldier, to maintain him so long as he should be stationed
at home, and supply provisions when he was sent abroad.
Hallenberg, v. 122.
’’
See an extract therefrom in Hallenberg, iv. App. No. iii.
ably increased at an after-period of this reign, as
well by the new imposts as by the reversion of
duke Charles Philip’s principality (Suthermanland,
Nerike, and Vermeland), and other fiefs which fell
to the crown by deaths in the royal family*’, though
against this are to be set the losses of the country
by pestilence’ and dearth; but the inadequacy of
the income is best shown by the extraordinary
means to which the government was compelled to
resort, especially to procure ready money, whereof
was great, want for carrying on the war, while the
crown revenues (which on that very account it is
difficult to calculate in money) were mostly paid in
produce, or consisted in the performance of per-
sonal services, as well without as within the titles
comprised in the public accounts. Thus a crowd
of different burdens are mentioned, among which
post-carriage and jiurveyance were doubtless the
heaviest on the country, and besides voluntary
aids, day-works, and portages of all kinds, which
the king excuses by saymg, that "the subject
nmst look to the circumstances of the time." The
extraordinary means were :
—
I. Loans. Gustavus I. had paid off the public
debt; Eric XIV. contracted a new one, and it in-
creased under his successors. Gustavus Adolphus
makes complaints on this head from the beginning
of his reign. The queen dowager, to whom he ap-
plied in 1615 upon this subject, consoled him by
telling him that it was impossible at once to wage
war and to pay old debts, advising him to acknow-
ledge none older than the year 1598, when Charles
IX. had issued his public notice to the creditors of
the crown, to give in their accounts on pain of for-
feiting their claims ^. New loans were negotiated.
For money borrowed in Holland, interest was paid
at the rate of six and a quarter per cent ^
;
fur do-
mestic loans, ten per cent, and upwards, the crown
being besides obliged to give security ’. For a loan
of 200,000 Swedish dollars the queen dowager
received in 1624 the ordinary crown revenues of
Nerike in mortgage for the interest. For another
loan of 50,000 dollars she received twelve per cent.,
although she paid the sum not in money but in cop-
5
Equal to 189,726/., taking the Swedish rix-dollar banco
at \s. 8d. T.
6 Charles Philip’s duchy, the last possessed by any Swedish
prince, lapsed to the crown by his death in 1622. The
same had already happened with East-Gothland, Dalesland,
and four hundreds of West-Gothland by duke John’s death
in 1618. When Catharine Stenbock, the last wife of Gus-
tavus I., died in 1621, and Christina, mother of Gustavus
Adolphus, in 1625, their dowers also fell to the crown.
7 In the years 1620, 1621, and 1622, the southern parts of
Sweden and Finland were so ravaged by the plague, that
the levies had to be intermitted, or, as in 1621, boys of fifteen
and sixteen were taken for military service. It came to
Stockholm towards the end of 1622, and carried off twenty
thousand of the inhabitants during the following year, when
it also raged in East-Gothland. In March, 1625, it again
showed itself in Stockholm, and anew in 1629 and 1630, when
the court, as in 1622, quitted the capital. Several of these
years, as 1621, 1623, and 1630, were marked also by dearth.
8 The counsel appears to have been followed. In his
reference to the queen dowager the king includes no debts
older than 1605. Hallenberg, iii. 335.
9
Hallenberg, iv. 875.
’
In the Register for 1627 the following letter appears:
" Because our true subject and prelector of Upsala, the
learned master O. Laurelius, hath advanced to us and the
crown, for the carrying on of this so longsome war, 532
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