Estonia under Swedish rule
In the wake of the breakup of the State of the Teutonic Order, the Baltic German local nobility in the areas of Harrien (Harjumaa) and Wierland (Virumaa), as well as the city of Reval (Tallinn) in June 1561 (and somewhat later Jerwen (Järvamaa)) asked for and were granted protection by the Swedish king Eric XIV, leading to Swedish involvement in the Livonian War.
[3] At the same time, assertions in Estonia can also be seen as a way of preventing Russia and Denmark from gaining potentially dangerous footholds close to Swedish-controlled Finland.
[5][6][7][8] However, it remains unclear whether the contemporaneous Estonian-speaking population generally used that expression or whether it considered the time of Swedish rule to be significantly better than that of earlier foreign rulers.
[3] The future King John III had already as Grand Duke of Finland in the 1550s ambitions to establish Swedish rule in Estonia, but was held back by his father, Gustav Vasa.
It was not until 1561 that the local nobility asked the new king, Eric XIV, to intervene in the ongoing Livonian War and protect the lands of Harjumaa, Virumaa and the city of Tallinn in exchange for overlord-ship.
Unlike in Livonia, where Poland soon violated the agreement, Swedish kings kept their promises to the city of Tallinn and the local nobility.
[16] The landlords of north and west Estonia who formed the Estonian nobility were represented by its general assembly, convened regularly every third year (Landtag), and its executive body — the college of magistrates (Landratscollegium).
That central authority complied for such a long time was due to the continuous wars, which made it important to preserve the loyalty of the local aristocracy.
[16] Much of the local aristocracy had also fled during the war, and instead members of the Swedish nobility moved to seize possession of many of the Livonian estates.
This was partly caused by the fact that the state had surrendered its economic and political power by transferring most crown properties to private hands (mostly Swedish high aristocracy for their merits).
As a result of the continuous warfare and the transfer of the crown properties into private possession, the revenues of the Swedish state had diminished.
In the Duchy of Estonia, where land ownership was more clearly determined and there were more manors passed on according to an ancient inheritance law, the 1680 reduction went quite peacefully.
[21] The reforms carried out in Estonia under Charles XI did not have a long-lasting effect; in reality only Swedish church law was put into practice.
The war, which lasted to 1721 and in which one of the major Swedish victories was fought in Estonia, the Battle of Narva, ultimately proved disastrous to Sweden.
As Russia considered the support of the local nobility to be essential in consolidating its power, the towns and the aristocrats achieved favourable terms of capitulation.
