that he would succeed, for in Norway most men still looked upon Erik as their rightful king, and in Sweden the marshal and regent, Karl Knudsson, who wanted the crown for himself, had a strong party in his favour. Margaret's scheme for uniting the three kingdoms under one crown was thus thwarted on the first attempt to carry it out, but in 1442, after much trouble and long suspense, Christopher was proclaimed king both in Norway and Sweden. The Swedes had been the first to submit to hin, chiefly through the persuasions of their clergy, to whom Christopher had promised special privileges, and whom he won over by so many gifts that the bondar class, who never cared much for this German prince, called him the "bishops' king." Christopher had to pay a heavy price for the Swedish crown, for besides the clergy he had to buy over the marshal, Karl Knudsson, who would not receive him as king until he had secured for himself the duchy of Finland as an hereditary fief, and the island of Oeland for a term of years, besides a large sum of money in payment of his outlay while regent of the kingdom. Knudsson had also obtained from the king a written promise that he should never in any way be called to account for his acts, or for the manner in which he had spent the public money while he ruled the kingdom, but in spite of this, heavy demands were soon made upon him for lands and moneys which his enemies charged him with having taken on false pretences, and he was forced to give up Oeland and great part of Finland. His brother-nobles, who had always been jealous of him, did their utmost to keep up illwill between him and the king, and during this short reign the marshal had no share in the government, and was even seldom seen at the Swedish court.

Christopher's Queen.-In the year 1446, King Christopher brought his young bride, Dorothea of Brandenburg, to Stockholm to be crowned Queen of Sweden. The time was not well chosen for wedding festivities, for, besides many other causes of trouble in the land, there was almost a famine owing to the bad seasons of the previous year. And the people, enraged at the lavish waste of the Court and the quantity of corn used at Stockholm to feed the horses in the royal stables, collected in large bodies around the palace, uttering cries of

anger against Christopher, whom they called the "bark-bread," and "famine" king, and threatening to set Karl Knudsson on the throne in his place. This state of things made Sweden hateful to the king and his young queen, and they were glad to get away from the country as soon as they could, but they fared scarcely better in their other kingdoms, for in Norway King Erik was still held in greater favour than Christopher, and in Denmark the people grumbled over their high taxes and hard living nearly as loudly as the Swedes. Poor King Christopher cannot have had a very happy life after he had won the three crowns which he had so much coveted, for everything that went wrong in any one of his kingdom's was always laid to his charge, and he had constantly to listen to a long list of grievances set forth by one or another of his three Councils of State. On the whole he seems to have had an easy temper, and a way of trying to make the best of troubles which he could not mend. On one occasion a body of Swedish nobles came to his Danish court at Viborg to complain that the coasts of Sweden were being troubled by pirates, who were believed to be in the pay of the late King Erik, and to demand that they should be pursued and punished without mercy. "Well!" answered the king, "it certainly is a pity that my uncle cannot find a more honest way of getting his living, but after robbing him of his three kingdoms, I do not think we ought to be very hard upon him if he snatches a dinner now and then without paying for it. A man cannot live on nothing, you know!"

Revolt in Jutland. The Swedes were very angry at Christopher's indifference to their troubles, and when the peasants of Jutland raised a revolt in favour of King Erik, they would not supply him with the men and money which he wanted them to give him, and it was some time before he was able to collect an army and advance against the rebels. This was in fact the very worst peasant-war that any Danish king ever had to meet. At one time there were 35,000 men in arms against the royal troops, and once when they gained the day in a great battle, they seized upon the king's general, Æske Brock, and put him and twelve other nobles to death. The Jutlanders had gained over to their side a leader of noble birth,

called Henrik Tagesöns, and for a time it seemed as if the rebels would suceced in putting down the power of the king and nobles in Jutland. Everywhere the rich were pursued and slain, their houses burnt, and their lands seized and parted among the peasants, who were however at last thoroughly defeated in a battle fought near Aagard in Jutland, and from that time forth they were forced to pay heavy fines to the crown and the great landowners, and to give tithes to the clergy, which was more hateful to them than any other obligation that could have been laid upon them.

Ways of Raising Money.-Christopher, who was always in want of money, tried in the course of his reign various shabby ways of obtaining it. In Sweden he sold the crown-fiefs to the highest bidders, and sometimes, as it was said, his officers took money from two or more buyers of one fief, and then left them to settle by fighting between themselves who was to be the owner. In 1447 he seems to have taken a lesson from his uncle, the pirate king Erik, for he sent ships to waylay a number of Dutch and English trading vessels as they were passing through the Sound, and seized upon all the money which they had received in return for the goods sold by them to his own subjects in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In the following year this ignoble king planned another money-raid, and on pretence of wishing to go on a pilgrimage to the church of Wilsnak in Brandenburg, demanded a free passage for himself and his retinue through the Hanse-towns. His real object, however, was the attack and plunder of the rich trading port of Lybeck, where a number of German princes, who were in league with him, had assembled as if by chance, bringing with them arms which they had hid in empty wine casks. The breaking out of a fire in the night, which was mistaken by the Danes and their friends for the signal of attack, saved the city, for the citizens on finding out the treachery of their guests sounded the alarm bells, and, gathering together in large numbers, drove the strangers out and forced Christopher to leave the harbour with all his ships and men. On reaching Helsingborg the king found himself too ill to proceed further, and after a few days' suffering he died in the first week of the year 1448, from the bursting of a malignant tumour, which was

ascribed to poison, according to a common mode of explaining diseases not understood by the surgeons of those times.

Council in search of a King.-As Christopher died leaving no children, the Councils of State found themselves again called upon to look about them for some prince of the royal blood to whom they might offer their crowns. The Danish Council at once fixed upon Adolf, Duke of Holstein, and not waiting for the burial of the king, they sent to offer the throne to that prince, hoping that by this choice they might again. unite Slesvig with Denmark. But Duke Adolf, who had no children and who loved his ease, would not trouble himself to accept the crown which was offered to him. He told them, however, that if they were in want of a king from his family, he thought they could not do better than take his nephew, Count Christian of Oldenburg, who, like himself, could trace his descent from the old royal Danish house through Rikissa, daughter of Erik Glipping. The council followed Count Adolf's advice, and as the young Oldenburg prince at once accepted the offer which they made him of the Danish crown, no time was lost in settling who was to succeed King Christopher. The Council next had to think what was to be done in regard to the widowed Queen Dorothea, whose large dowry had all been spent, and would now have to be refunded. But here again Count Christian helped them out of their difficulty, for he made himself so agreeable to this young widow of seventeen, that she consented to marry him as soon as her term of mourning was past, and thus saved the Danes the hard task of raising a large sum of money to repay to her father the ample fortune, which her late husband had spent on his unlucky wars.

Sweden from 1434.-Before we close this chapter, we must take a glance at what had been going on in Sweden and Norway since the days when Engelbrecht Engelbrechtsson had

so boldly come before King Erik of Denmark to demand justice for his fellow-countrymen. Engelbrecht's first visit to the Danish court was made in 1434, and from that time till Erik was deposed in 1439 one congress after the other met to consult about public affairs in Sweden; but no lasting good was effected by all these meetings, and public affairs were as much disturbed as ever. The great men of the land fought and struggled among themselves for freedom from all restraint but that of their own will, and the peasants were made to pay heavily in the way of taxes and forced labour for the little liberty that they could still claim. Change of rulers did not make much difference to the lower classes, but still they agreed. generally with the nobles in hating Danish rule, although fear or interest often made them offer to do homage to Danish kings. Party spirit ran high in Sweden at the time when Christopher of Bavaria was elected King of Denmark in 1440. And although the diet which met that year at Arboga had passed a solemn decree that the union of Calmar should never be renewed, and no foreign king should ever again be chosen in Sweden, the Marshal Karl Knudsson was able in the same year to persuade the electors to proclaim Christopher king, in return for which, as we have seen, he secured to himself the fief of Finland, and received Oeland in pledge for the moneys which, according to his own statement, he had spent in the public service. At the moment Karl was thus apparently serving the cause of the King of Denmark, it was reported by his friends that a pious man had foretold that he would be crowned King of Sweden at Upsala, and that a little child had even seen the crown sparkling on his head. These rumours made a great impression on the superstitious and the ignorant, and when his tall and handsome person was seen by the side of the short and stout King Christopher, the Stockholmers ran after them crying out: "The marshal ought to be king. Our crown would better suit him than that stumpy little German!" Christopher could not have been very well pleased with these remarks, but he was a good-natured man, and only observed that "the Swedes were a free-spoken people."

It was the clergy, as we have seen in a former part of this chapter, who had the greatest share in securing the crown of