Gustav I Vasa

It is a substantial national wealth that made Sweden independent from Denmark , which led the Kalmar Union . He is the one who made Sweden a modern country .

His father, Erik Johansson Vasa (1470-1520), was a member of the Swedish Senate, and his mother, Cecilia Månsdotter (1476-1523), was also from a noble family. The Vasa family to which he belonged was a prestigious noble family that even produced a Swedish regent during the Kalmar Union .

1517-1518 King of Denmark and Norway who attempted to fully subjugate Sweden He participated in the struggle for independence against Christian II, but when the regent Sten Sture den yngre (1493-1520) was defeated, he was selected as a hostage of noble children to be sent to Christian II and taken to Denmark . At the time, all of his companions who were taken with him defected to Denmark, but Gustav Vasa did not defect and fled to Lübeck, a free city of the Holy Roman Empire .

While living in exile in Lübeck, Christian II tried to break Sweden's independence movement by executing major Swedish nobles by inciting the Stockholm Massacre at the instigation of the traitor Archbishop of Uppsala, Gustav Trolle (Gustav Trolle 1488-1535). Gustav Vasa's father, Erik Johansson, was also sacrificed at this time.

Gustav Vasa, who arrived in Dalarna, encouraged the local peasants to revolt by informing them of the massacre of Christian II. However, the farmers, who had no way of knowing the news from the capital, ignored it, thinking it was nonsense, and he was disappointed and left for Norway. fled to the border . Dalarna farmers, who heard that there was an uproar in Stockholm after he disappeared, captured him right in front of the Norwegian border and appointed him as commander of the Dalarna region. The peasant soldiers gathered by Gustav Vasa were gathered only with the will to escape from Denmark's oppression, and although they had outdated weapons and were untrained, they were enough to threaten the small Danish army that depended on mercenaries and achieved successive victories. Upon hearing the news of the peasant uprising led by Gustav Vasa, uprisings broke out in other parts of Sweden and succeeded in recapturing most of the country except Stockholm and some castles. However, there were limits to capturing Stockholm with peasant soldiers alone, so Gustav Vasa went back to Lübeck and recaptured it with mercenaries brought in by persuading the Lübeck city council members.[2] .

Meanwhile, Christian II was dethroned from the Danish throne due to his failure in Sweden and his uneasy relationship with the Danish nobles, and was subsequently dethroned in Norway, so he went into exile in the Habsburg Netherlands, where his wife's family was . The Danish throne belongs to Schleswig-Holstein, the uncle of Christian II. It passed to Duke Frederick, and the Swedish Parliament decided to elect a new King of Sweden, fearing that the new King of Denmark and Norway, Frederick I, would claim the Swedish throne . As a result , Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden at the Diet held in Strängnäs on June 6, 1523 .

Although he succeeded in recapturing Finland, in the early days of his reign, his status was merely that of a representative of the nobility, and his royal authority was unstable. In 1529, nobles and clergy revolted in Vestra Götaland , and in 1533, peasants revolted in Dalarna. Gustav I harshly suppressed the rebellion. Afterwards, the nobles became quiet, and the Dalarna region never rebelled again.

The most threatening peasant uprising during the reign of Gustav I was the Take Rebellion in 1542. This rebellion was suppressed in 1543, and its leader, Niels Dake, was burned to death and his body was displayed throughout the country.

In order to break away from the Roman Catholic Church , which had been a threat to the Swedish monarchy since the 14th century, Martin Luther 's disciple Olaus Petri (1493-1552) was used to spread the Lutheran Church . As a result, religious reform was implemented in Sweden as well . Monastery property was confiscated to supplement state finances, and the church was subordinated to the state by appointing Ulaus Petri's younger brother, Laurentius Petri (1499-1573), as the first Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala. He also had the Petri brothers publish several publications and contributed to the development of the Swedish language by publishing the Gustav Vasa Bible written in Swedish in 1540.

Gustav Vasa's religious reform was carried out in Finland as well, and Michael Agricola was installed as Archbishop of Obo to accelerate the reform. Agricola contributed to the development of the Finnish language by publishing a Finnish Bible. In 1550, Helsingfors was established to keep the Hanseatic city of Reval in check , but it did not have much effect.[3]

The tax system was also reformed to collect taxes directly from farmers. Thanks to this, the royal tax revenue increased. In addition, in 1544, he boiled down the parliament and changed the succession to the Swedish throne, which had been an electoral monarchy until now , to a system where only his descendants could run as candidates, effectively changing it to a hereditary system.

In the early days, he felt threatened by Christian II's restoration attempt and sought to stabilize his defense by allying himself with the new King of Denmark and Norway, Frederick I. After Frederick I died in 1533, a war of succession called the Count War broke out in Denmark, and Gustav I supported Frederick I's son, Christian III . Christian III conquered Denmark, Norway, Greenland, and Iceland, thereby abolishing the enormous privileges previously granted to Lübeck, who had helped restore Christian II, in return for the war of independence.

In the latter years of his life, from 1555 to 1557, he fought a war with the Russian Tsardom . He stopped the Rus army from invading Vyborg , but returned to Nöteborg.[4] When they invaded, the Swedish army showed only problems and retreated. This war ended with the Treaty of Novgorod.

Gustav I was concerned that his eldest son, Erik , and his second son, John , would fight every chance they got. However, the conflict between the two was in no way aided or abetted by him, as in 1557, he divided Sweden into principalities and allowed autonomy at the level of a semi-independent country to his second and younger children. This was a policy that ran counter to the strengthening of royal authority that he had pursued so far, and as a result, Sweden experienced political strife marred by bone-headed strife within the Vasa dynasty until his youngest child, Karl , ascended the throne . His health began to suffer from the 1550s, and he died in September 1560, after making a final speech in which he summoned his sons and nobles and asked them to unite.