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The "Reduction" of 1680

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military staff clamoured for redress. The Council came in a body to implore him to intervene. Civil war, if not revolution, seemed imminent. But the King, courteously expressing his disbelief that any party could desire other than the public good, declared his willingness to confirm the measures on which the four Estates should agree. Neither the Council nor the majority in the House of Nobles ventured to carry resistance to greater lengths than noise and disorder. Before the end of November, the nobles had consented to the resumption by the Crown of all counties and baronies and all other of the alienated royal domains whose rent exceeded 600 dollars. The carrying-out of this vast Reduction was entrusted to a Commission, whose members, like those of the Great Commission, received a written indemnity from the Estates. Though the business of the Diet was now at an end, Charles kept it assembled, in order to remove any impediments which the two Commissions might encounter. Before the Estates finally dispersed, they gave proof that their struggles had prepared the way for autocracy. By allowing the attack on the nobles to come from their social inferiors, Charles had commended the monarchy not only to the party who thus became victorious, but also to their victims, who would rather trust to a king than to a mob. When therefore he enquired of the Estates how far he was bound by the Form of Government, and whether the Council was in truth, as it had made some pretence of being, a separate Estate of the Realm, they were unanimous for absolutism. The King, they declared in December, 1680, was bound by no form of government, but only by the law of Sweden. In ruling his hereditary realm, he need consult his Council only when and how he pleased, and was responsible to God alone. They further besought him to make provision for the government in case of his own decease.

For several years after 1680, the two Commissions were busily transferring the wealth of the nobles to the coffers of the State. Charles had the most pressing reasons for the eagerness with which he spurred on the Commissions. His precise integrity could not but feel humiliated when his ambassador, after emptying his own pockets in the public service, vainly besought the jewellers of Copenhagen to supply trinkets for the King of Sweden to present to his future Queen. The poverty and consequent peril of the nation at a time when a European conflagration was daily expected, and when Denmark and Brandenburg were leagued with France, forms the best apology for the tyranny of the Commissioners. The Councillors adjudged responsible for public acts during the King's minority were condemned to make good the injury which these acts were deemed to have inflicted on the State, together with interest which in many cases was fixed at twelve per cent. The heirs of Bonde, the patriotic apostle of retrenchment, were thus mulcted of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The Råd or Council, however, divided and leaderless as it was, discredited by its futility the argument of the

576

Benevolent despotism of Charles XI

[1682-97

learned Rudbeck that Rådman and Rhadamanthus were the same. Charles settled every disputed point at his pleasure and several times altered the procedure. Before the end of May, 1682, the Great Commission pronounced the last of its verdicts, and a commission of settlement was at work upon details. By 1689 the main harvest had been garnered in. Some 4,000,000 dollars passed from the great Houses to the Crown, and this enormous sum sufficed to turn the balance of political power. The birth of the Commission had proved that the Estates were superior to the Council. Its work rendered the Crown superior both to the Council and to the Estates.

While the great Houses were thus enduring the blows of the Great Commission, they were exposed to still heavier chastisement from the Commission of Reduction, which the King likewise inspired and over which the untiring Klas Fleming presided until his death in 1685. The great surrender of 1680 had been made by the nobles in the full expectation that this would be the final sacrifice exacted from them by the Crown. At the Diet which met at Stockholm in October, 1682, they were undeceived. Many of the great Houses had now been laid low. Their latifundia were reverting to the Crown. The Council of the Realm had become, in composition and in name alike, a Royal Council. But the hostility of the non-noble Estates remained unquenched, and they clamoured for a further Reduction as the only means of paying the debts of the State. As in 1680, therefore, both sides were brought to commit all authority over the Reduction and much else into the willing hands of the King. From this Diet Charles emerged a full-fledged autocrat. He claimed, with slender limitations, the right to make laws, to order the succession, to abolish freedom of speech, to levy taxes, to direct education, administration and the Church, and under one or another branch of the Reduction to repudiate most of the debts due from the Crown to its subjects, while appropriating most of their property at will. At the same time, a standing army was in contemplation which, when complete, would render the King wholly independent of the Estates. Sweden, it seemed, in guarding against oligarchy, had abjured her ancient freedom.

From 1682 to the King's death in 1697, the Swedish nation had experience of benevolent despotism -the appropriate prelude to the career of Charles XII, who was born in the former year. During this period Sweden's political record is marked by few events of special significance. For more than fourteen years, however, all was done that royal power and energy could do to realise, both by foreign and domestic policy, the ideals of Charles XI. For Sweden the indispensable condition of future strength was rest, and the monarch who delighted in the life of a soldier therefore made himself an unbending opponent of war. Diplomacy, which he was said to regard as "an unnecessary scholastic," he delegated to Bengt Oxenstierna, and accepted the ideas of his Minister on condition that Sweden kept clear of vassalage to France and of war.

1682-97] Reforms and advances under Charles XI 577

Under the guidance of Oxenstierna, he had, in September, 1681, joined with the Dutch in the so-called Hague Treaty of Guarantee, by which the two Powers engaged to defend for twenty years the Treaties of Westphalia and Nymegen, which were then being violated by Louis XIV. Despite the efforts of the French party at Stockholm to overthrow the Minister, his policy of diplomatic opposition to France as the disturber of Europe continued to prevail. Swedish troops played so limited a part in the War of the Grand Alliance that Charles XI could act as mediator in the negotiations for its close.

In internal affairs, Sweden derived benefit from a foreign policy which often appeared cowardly and insincere. In many branches of the national life progress became possible. Although Church and State were uniting to massacre witches, and although the King was too ignorant and too practical to play the patron, science, literature and art flourished as never before in Sweden. The nation seemed to be struggling to fit itself for the great position which it owed to the fortune of war and politics. It strove to incorporate with itself the nonGerman provinces which it had won, and at the same time to increase the strength and culture which afforded the only basis of empire. In education, in worship, and in law, Scania was made Swedish. The serfs of Livonia were safeguarded against the nobles, at a time when the Reduction was pressing upon that province with a severity which drove Patkul to rebellion. A national army and a national fleet grew up; yet the revenue exceeded the yearly needs of the State. But all initiative came from the Crown, and every class was taught to look to the King alone. The Council had become a law-court, the Diet an echo, while the governmental offices or Collegia, which were now regularly paid, fell into the position of unambitious instruments of the royal will. The ascendancy of the great nobles had vanished with their estates. Charles succeeded, moreover, where the great Gustavus had failed, in bridling the Church. In 1686 a new Ecclesiastical Law enforced the supremacy of the State, and the King took care to make this supremacy real. A new Swedish service-book, catechism, hymn-book, and Bible were the fruits of his zeal for reform.

For industry and commerce Charles did all that benevolent despotism could accomplish. By incessant journeys of inspection he gained insight into the resources of the land and the needs of the people. He preserved peace, improved the administration of justice, began a revision of the law, and resorted to the well-known contrivances of the Mercantilists for creating trade by legislation, and for preserving Sweden for the Swedes. The industries which made the greatest advance were however those of cloth, iron, and shipbuilding, which supplied the needs of the King's greatest creations- the army and the fleet.

Among the proudest achievements of Charles XI the Indelningsverk, or establishment of a system of territorial tenures for a standing army

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37

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Military and naval changes. - Denmark [1682-97

some 38,000 men, ranks high. A principle which existed in the time of Gustavus Vasa, and which had been developed by Charles IX and Gustavus Adolphus, became in consequence of the King's triumph over the nobles the basis of the national force. Its essence lay in the assignment of Crown lands to the direct and permanent support of soldiers. Some estates were granted to officers, others enjoyed free of dues on condition of supporting a cavalryman and his horse. To escape the conscription, by which, in time of war, every tenth peasant had to become a soldier, most of the rural districts agreed to provide land on which in time of peace an equivalent number of soldiers could subsist as peasants. Thus Sweden gained security at home, while the spoils of the nobles enabled her to garrison her conquered provinces by hiring some 25,000 mercenaries. A similar territorial system provided for the support of most of the men who were required to man the national fleet, which was organised by Hans Wachtmeister at the new naval station of Karlskrona. Thirty-eight ships of the line, manned by some 11,000 men, had been built before Charles died.

The first years of autocracy were thus for Sweden years of activity, order, and growth. Yet even under the sway of Charles XI many of the familiar vices of absolutism made their appearance. Personally the most unassuming of mankind, Charles claimed and obtained for his office the most subservient renunciation of popular freedom. He could pardon a drunkard who gave battle to the royal suite, but he could not pardon criticism of his father's testament recorded a quarter of a century before. Ruling with the aid of a few secretaries and friends, he became the unconscious centre of faction and of intrigue. The Reduction, which gave rise to a regular government department and added some two and a half million dollars to the annual revenue, developed into an offensive tyranny. No land except such as could be proved to have never belonged to the Crown was secure against confiscation, and small inquisitorial commissions were dispatched to determine whose inheritance should be taken and whose left. As was almost inevitable, corruption spread. In a year and a half (1701-2) the family of Königsmarck expended a sum equivalent to nearly £6000 of our money in bribing the officials of the Reduction. Charles had solved the problem of dealing with the great nobles; but he bequeathed to Sweden the still greater problem of settling the position and powers of the Crown.

III

Christian V survived his brother-in-law by little more than two years The fall of Griffenfeld, who was charged with treason and condemned to life-long imprisonment in 1676, extinguished the glory of his reign. In the War of Scania, as well as at home, Denmark became a prey to faction and intrigue. The despicable clique which had overthrown Griffenfeld allied itself with the King's mistress, who was presented with some of the late Minister's estates; and public policy was thus made subservient to

1679-97] Domestic and foreign policy of Christian V 579

private gain and spite. In the early stages of the War, while the Duke of Plön was still dominant and successful, Christian V's hopes had been as buoyant as those of his grandfather in 1625. He dreamed of recovering the lost provinces, of crushing Gottorp, of acquiring Bremen, Lübeck, Wismar, and Rügen, of enjoying the Sound Dues unimpaired by the Swedish exemption, and of controlling the commerce of the Elbe-in short, of establishing a position on the Baltic which might transfer to Denmark the commercial empire of the Dutch. The later campaigns, however, brought not merely disappointment to the King, but also exhaustion to the kingdom, which had supplied men and money for the War, and which, in both war and peace, was burdened with a costly imitation of the splendour of Louis XIV.

After the Peace of 1679, however, the need of the Treasury and the ambition of the King prompted a reorganisation of the country. In area and in social structure, Denmark had been rapidly transformed. The financial basis of the army was now reconstructed, and the land underwent a survey which facilitated a revised scheme of taxation, the most scientific in Europe. Despite the opposition of the clergy, Huguenots were brought in with the right to non-Lutheran worship. Trade and industry were overwhelmed with government regulations. Most famous of all, in 1683 there was published the "Danish Law of King Christian V”— a codification compiled under Frederick III and revised under his successor -and from this Code, which was common to all the provinces, both autocracy and popular convenience gained much. These reforms were in part the work of new men. The bureaucracy, composed largely of German burghers, was gaining rank and influence. The punishment of Olaf Rosenkrans for his Apologia nobilitatis Daniae (1681) bore witness to the decline of the old nobility, while the influence exercised by the incorruptible aristocrat Jens Juel from the close of the War to 1697 proved that autocracy was not entirely dependent on its creatures.

The foreign policy of Denmark from the Peace of Lund to the death of Charles XI (1679-97) led to little positive result at the moment, but helped to bring on the great convulsion of the north under Charles XII. Baffled on the side of Sweden, Christian and his advisers turned their eyes southward, and would gladly have accepted intimacy with the conquerors of Scania to secure a free hand in Schleswig-Holstein. Charles XI, however, adhered with honourable pertinacity to the Gottorp cause; and his steadfastness, together with the trend of European politics, frustrated the designs of Christian V. In 1684, the Danes, acting in the French fashion of the hour, seized the portion of Schleswig belonging to the House of Gottorp, and hinted, not obscurely, that the recovery of Scania was predicted by the stars. Five years later, however, after a congress at Altona (1687-9), they were compelled to disgorge. In 1694, on the accession of Duke Frederick IV, the Gottorp question once more became acute. In place of a weary voluptuary, Denmark was confronted