Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. Reign of Christina, 1632–1654 - B. Personal Rule of Christina, 1644–1654
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ITS A History of Sweden
people are prosperous and comfortable. He has built
roads, improved harbors, and planted fruit trees around
the castle and about the huts of his subjects.
The Privileges of the Nobles. Lands held by the
nobles were more or less exempt from taxation, and
such lands were continually increasing in extent. Many
a warlike exploit had to be rewarded with a grant of
land. Possessions of such men as Axel Oxenstiern,
John Banr, Lennart Torstensson, and Per Brahe
equaled whole provinces. Naturally the government
sought to reward such men for their eminent services
to the state. In critical times neither Gustavus Adol-
phus nor the regency had any other means of secur-
ing funds than to sell crown lands to wealthy nobles.
With every such sale or feudal grant the revenues of
the crown diminished. But the war relentlessly de-
manded money and more money and men in their best
years. Thus ever heavier became the burdens of the
unprivileged classes.
Those were dark days for the peasantry. Their small
holdings were threatened to be swallowed up by the
nobles. Many peasants on crown lands passed by grants
and purchases under lordly masters. One must not
suppose that the tax burdens of the peasants were
lightened by the fact that the lands they now worked
under the lords were more or less exempt from taxa-
tion. No, cruel and arbitrary lords practiced many
extortions, and in their prisons and flogging huts
many heart-rending cruelties and injustices were com-
mitted on defenseless subjects.
The peasants complained at a Eiksdag in Christian’s
reign : "We have heard that in other lands the peasant
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