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Updated: May 3, 2025
Advancing before his people, Sture spoke to them with few but telling words: "If you ever desire to enjoy peace and security in Sweden stand by me this day and cling one to another. I shall do my part. I fear not the king nor his Danes and mercenaries, but gladly venture life and blood and all that I possess on the event of this battle. If you will do the same, lift up your hands."
At the age of twenty-four he left the academy at Upsala, where he had been educated in the arts and sciences, and repaired to the court of Sten Sture the Younger, where he was soon a general favorite, loved for his amiable character and admired for his wit and vivacity.
King Alfred sent a nauie of his ships well furnished with men of warre into Eastangle, the which at the mouth of the riuer called Sture, incountering with 16 ships of the Danes, set vpon them, and ouercame them in fight: but as they returned with their prises, they incountered with another mightie armie of the enimies, and fighting with them were ouercome and vanquished. Malm. Ethelfleda.
The nobles of that country, when the news of the disastrous defeat reached them, rose in revolt, under the leadership of Sten Sture, drove the Danes out of Stockholm, and kept his queen, Christina of Saxony, prisoner for three years. Hans had no more armies to send to Sweden and he was obliged to renounce its crown.
The quarter of the town where this took place is still named Sture, in memory of the dead, and on the spot where the great pyre was kindled stands St. Christopher's Church. Such was the famous, or rather the infamous, "blood-bath of Stockholm," which still remains as a frightful memory to the land. It did not end here.
For twenty-seven years Sweden remained without a king, under the wise rule of Sten Sture. Then Hans of Denmark, son of Christian I., was chosen as king, in the belief that he would keep his promises of good government. As he failed to keep them he was driven out after a four years' rule, as we have told in the last tale, and Sten Sture became practically king again.
Though twice beaten Sten Sture had no thought of giving up the fight. For some reason Nils Sture, who with the large force under his command had been depended upon to make a diversion in their favor, had not appeared. Bad roads had detained him and he was still struggling onward towards his assigned position.
Stockholm was held by the widow of Sten Sture with a half-famished garrison. In Kalmar another woman, Anna Bjelke, commanded, but her men murmured, and the fall of the fortress was imminent. When Gustav Vasa, who had slipped in unseen, exhorted them to stand fast, they would have mobbed him. He left as he had come, the day before the surrender.
At that time Sweden had had no king of her own for a hundred years, when the kingdom had become united with Norway and Denmark in the reign of Queen Margaret by a treaty that is known in history as the Union of Calmar . As long as Queen Margaret lived the three kingdoms were well-governed and happy; but her successors were by no means as wise as she, and at the period we are writing of the Danish stewards of King Hans and his son, Christian II., oppressed and ill-treated the Swedes in every possible way, and Sten Sture, regent though he was, had no power to protect them.
As for the tyrant himself, his bloody work seemed to excite him to a sort of madness of fury. He ordered the body of Sten Sture the Younger to be dug from its grave in Riddarholm Church, and it is said that in his fury he bit at the half-consumed remains. The body of Sten's young son was also disinterred, and the two were carried to the great funeral pile to be burnt with the others.
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