History of Sweden (1611–1648)

This change, which was to give a martial colouring to the whole policy of Sweden for the next hundred and twenty years, dates from a decree of the Riksdag of Linköping establishing, at the urgent suggestion of Charles, a regular army; each Province in the country being henceforth liable to provide and maintain a fixed number of infantry and cavalry for the service of the state.

Estonia was recovered by the Swedes in 1600, but their determined efforts of 1601–1609 to gain a foothold in Livonia were frustrated by the military ability of the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz.

[5] Hitherto Charles had aimed at supporting the weaker Slavonic power against the stronger; but now that Russia seemed about to disappear from among the nations of Europe, Swedish statesmen naturally sought some compensation for the expenses of the war before Poland had had time to absorb everything.

[6] Still worse, the Kalmar War, prudently concluded by Charles' son, Gustavus Adolphus, in the second year of his reign, by the Treaty of Knäred, January 20, 1613 imposed such onerous pecuniary obligations and such intense suffering upon Sweden as to enkindle into a fire of hatred, which was to burn fiercely for the next two centuries, the long smouldering antagonism between the two sister nations of Scandinavia which dated back to the bloody days of Christian Tyrant.

When Novgorod submitted provisionally to the suzerainty of Sweden, Swedish statesmen had believed, for a moment, in the creation of a Trans-Baltic dominion extending northwards to Archangelsk and eastwards to Vologda.

By the Treaty of Stolbovo on February 27, 1617 the tsar surrendered to the Swedish king the provinces of County of Kexholm and Ingria, including the fortress of Nöteborg (later Schlusselburg), the key to Finland.

The Riksdag Ordinance of 1617 first converted a turbulent and haphazard mob of "riksdagsmen" huddling together like a flock of sheep or drunken boors, into a dignified national assembly, meeting and deliberating according to rule and order.

One of the nobility (first called the Landmarskalk, or Marshal of the Diet, in the Riksdag ordinance of 1526) was now regularly appointed by the king as the spokesman of the House of Nobles, or Riddarhus, while the primate generally acted as the talman or president of the three lower estates, the clergy, burgesses and peasants.

The rights of the Riksdag were secured by the Konungaförsäkran, or assurance given by every Swedish king on his accession, guaranteeing the collaboration of the estates in the work of legislation, and they were also to be consulted on all questions of foreign policy.

The eleven Riksdags held by Gustavus Adolphus were almost exclusively occupied in finding ways and means for supporting the ever-increasing burdens of the Polish and German wars.

In fact, during the subsequent reign of Ladislaus IV of Poland (1632–1648), the Poles prevented that martial monarch from interfering in the Thirty Years' War on the Catholic side.

Gustavus, whose lively imagination was easily excited by religious ardour, enormously magnified clerical influence in Poland and frequently scented dangers where only difficulties existed.

All Gustavus's further efforts were frustrated by the superior strategy of the Polish hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski, and in June 1629, the king gladly accepted the lucrative Treaty of Altmark.

[8] Thus Sweden held, for a time, the control of the principal trade routes of the Baltic up to the very confines of the empire; and the increment of revenue resulting from this commanding position was of material assistance during the earlier stages of the war in Germany, whither Gustavus transferred his forces in June 1630.