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1629.]
Campaign of 1612.
Desperate combat. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. DANISH WAR. Elfsborg and Gullberg
taken by the Danes. 237
only at the mouth of the Gcita elf. Here Charles IX.
had founded Gottenburg, "a thorn in the eye of
the Jutes," a.s was then a current phrase in Sweden.
The newly-built town was i-azed by the Danes in
the coui’se of the war, and the main object of
Christian IV., after Calmar fell, was to make him-
self master of the fortresses of Elfsborg and Gull-
berg, which here on the Swedish side defended the
rivei’.
The young sovereign hastened from his first
diet to the war, but immediately offered peace, and
laid aside at the same time the disputed title of king
of the Lapps. The herald who was the bearer of the
proposals of peace was turned back by the Danes
at the frontier, and in a subsequent negotiation
respecting an exchange of captives, the Swedish
king received only the title of duke. The campaign
of 1612 was begun by the Danes in the middle of
winter. In January they sallied out of Cahnar,
laid waste a great part of Smaland, burned the
town of Vexioe with the castle of Kronoberg, and
threatened Jenkbping. At the same time king
Christian himself made an attempt from the Nor-
wegian fortress of Bohus on the Gota, to surpi-ise
that of Gullberg in the night. An assault five
times repeated was so valiantly repulsed by the
lieutenant, Martin Krakou, and after he was
wounded, by his bold wife Emerentia, Paul’s
daughter ’, that the king was forced to retire with
loss. New LoedoBse had shortly before been taken
by the Danes, and all the male inhabitants
slaughtered. Now West-Gothland was harried ;
Old LoedcEse, Skara, and more than three thou-
sand granges were destroyed *.
—At the same time
a division of the Swedish army, under duke John
and field-marshal Krus, was engaged in a similar
inroad upon Halland, where eighteen parishes
were plundered. Considerable loss, upon the re-
treat, not far from Falkenberg, was caused to the
Danish king, who was near being taken, but
rescued by Christian Barnekou with the sacri-
fice of his own life. Spots upon a great stone by
the way-side are still called by the peasants
" Christian Barnekou’s blood." With another
division of the Swedish troops Gustavus Adolphus
had broken up from Ryssby sconce near Calraar,
and invaded Scania to draw away the enemy to
the defence of his own territory. The province
was found unprotected, and twenty-four parishes
were desolated. On the i-etreat, the king, who had
sent forwards the greatest portion of his troops,
was attacked not far from the border in the parish
of West-Goinge, by the Danes returning from
Smaland. Battle was joined on the ice of Lake
Vidsioe, on the evening of the 11th of February.
The number of the slain and drowned was great ;
the king himself fell with his horse below the
ice, but was saved by his chamberlain Peter
Bauer, and a gallant trooper who followed the
banner of Upland, Thomas Laurencesou by name,
who received for this service a yeoman’s holding,
Igelstad of Romfertuna parish, still occupied by
his descendants. The report that Gustavus Adol-
phus had fallen was spread both within and without
7 In this the soldiers’ wives assisted her.
f
Hallenberg, from Danish testimonies, i. 303. 308.
9 The size of the /ana (standard) or battalion was various.
Peleus reckoned it, in the Swedish and Danish armies, at
six or seven hundred men. According to this computation,
the Danish force would be at least twenty-five thousand,
the confines of Sweden. Thus was the war, full of
adventure and ruthless, carried on by both sides
with equal exasperation. In the summer the fields
of Smaland remained unsown, and there was such
a scarcity of horses, that even those who travelled
upon the weightiest affairs of the king could never
obtain post-horses. All the males of Smaland and a
portion of West-Gothland had been summoned into
the field.
Preparations were made for the summer cam-
paign, by Denmark with united, by Sweden with
divided power, for hostilities continued with both
Russia and Poland. The Danes too were earlier
ready. Their army, consisting in great part of
foreign levies, marched out of winter quarters in
the beginning of April, was mustered at Helsing-
borg, and divided into two bodies, the more nume-
rous under kmg Christian’s own command destined
against West-Gothland, the other under field-mar-
shal Gerdt Rantzou against Smaland, Oeland, and
East-Gothland. A squadron of the Danish fleet,
so fairly equipped, that " the ocean," says the
Frenchman Peleus,
" would have admired them,
if it had had eyes," sailed to Calmar, while another
squadron blockaded Elfsborg. Christian himself
commenced the siege of the latter place in the be-
ginning of May, before Stiernskold, according to the
order of the Swedish king, could reinforce the garri-
son, which numbered only from four to five hundred
men, under the command of the lieutenant Olave
Strain. This important fortress capitulated on the
24th of May, after an investment of nineteen days.
Forty cannon, besides other military stores, with
six Swedish ships of war, fell into the enemy’s
hands. Gullberg, occupied by a garrison of which
the most were foreigners, surrendered on the
1st of June almost without resistance, with eighty
cannon, five hundred muskets, and provisions for a
whole year. About the same time the Scottish
and Irish soldiery stationed at Linkoping them-
selves plundered the town and drove out the in-
habitants, making off on the approach of the
Danes. For now king Christian entered West-Goth-
land with an army of thirty-two battalions of foot
and eleven squadrons of horse. Against this Gus-
tavus Adolphus could oppose but a force of eleven
battalions ^
and eight squadrons, wherefore he at
first avoided an action. When at length reinforced
by duke John from East-Gothland he offered
battle 1, Christian, whose men suffered from hunger
and the field-sickness, marched back after a three
weeks’ inroad to Gullberg, and thereby gave Gjjs-
tavus Adolphus an opportunity of turning against
Rantzou. The latter had on his side opened the
campaign by taking the fort of Ryssby, and there-
after reducing Oeland, on which the Danes had
already during the winter made fruitless attempts.
Now the fortress of Borgholm was taken, the
whole island liarried and wasted with fire ;
all the
clergy (they had incited the peasants to resistance)
were carried prisoners to Denmark. Returned
from Oeland, Rantzou marched along the coast,
turned off at the Em river into the country, dis-
persed at Hoegsby the last feeble remains of the
and the Swedish towards eleven thousand. Jahn (History
of the War of Calmar) states Christian’s army at twenty-two
thousand five hundred men, and the whole strength of the
Danei in Sweden (including that of Rantzou) at about forty
thousand.
>
Hallenberg, ii. 429.
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