Sweden: A Wandering in the Wilderness
A Histori-political Criticism
by Stuart Dubhghlasson
Lost opportunity is a terrible thing to contemplate from behind. If opportunity only knocks once, as must be the case with our serio-temporal existence, then looking at empty hands and wondering how full they could have been cannot be matched for the wistful feeling it gives. This is especially true when the hands could have been so full, and all around you know it.
Sweden coming to the end of the rule of Karl Knutsson (Bonde) was standing at the threshold of a glorious existence. Paired with a resolute ally in Denmark, with a struggling group of nations on her frontier, Sweden could have achieved much. As all now know, for almost thirty years, she obtained essentially nothing, unless you count derision and ridicule as having value.
Where, then, did the opportunity go? The forceful outlook that had lead to the taking back of lands from the Teutonic Knights, and the liberation of the Pommeranian coast, extended beyond 1463, should have seen a Swedish/Danish Baltic Sea. Secure in this area of influence, the two kingdoms could then have explored outward from Europe, not worried by the bickerings of the various petty dukes and counts and such, all trying to set themselves up as kingly overlords. But Sweden instead went into a sort of wandering journey through time, with no true guiding star.
We can, perhaps, forgive Knutsson, who was in his declining years after the Pommeranian annexation. Still, the failure to move in any direction cannot easily be explained. Brandenburg was supported by the Polish Kingdom, it is true, but Sweden's ally, Denmark, could have easily gained much with Swedish support along the coast, and Poland would hardly have been able to avoid a similar loss of coastal control had they entered such a fray. Muscovy was embroiled in a serious struggle to the south and east, leaving their own tenuous hold on a Baltic port in jeopardy. Lithuania, without any allies, only nominally controlled by the Polish monarchy, waited yearly for the hammer to fall. Fall it would, eventually, but when the dust settled from the blows, it was Muscovy who had built itself a strong house.
Supporters of Knutsson point to his efforts to revamp the military. It is true that, by the time of his death, substantial progress had been made in this area. The
indelningsverket, or Allotment system, used initially to pay for and provide competent officers, was soon expanded to a system for providing competent soldiers in times of war. Thus, the permanent soldier household got its start. The first example of these gains came during the otherwise ridiculed Lithuanian War, as the Swedish troops began to make their competence felt in assaulting and overwhelming fortified cities. Minsk, particularly, fell to the Swedish troops after less than three months, a record time for the era. But even this success came at a cost in lost chances: while the Swedish monarchy focused on the troops, the rest of the crowned heads of Europe focused on making money, perhaps correctly figuring that increased income would eventually lead to better armies, or at least more of them.
Whatever success Knutsson's supporters wish to claim, the efforts of the new king, Sten Sture, squandered the advantage. By the spring of 1474, nothing had been done by Sweden, while Muscovy, Brandenburg, and Burgundy all actively worked to expand their influence and secure their homelands. Pressure grew on the new king (often considered to be nothing but Christian of Denmark's lackey) to do s
omething with the new army. With much pomp, and a lot of circumstance, Gustavsson declared war upon the Lithuanian Duchy, not even bothering to trump up some sort of cause for the war. The result was predictable; the nobles were unhappy, the Danes silently watched and chuckled, and the troops irresolutely wandered the forests of Lithuania, managing a few successes, suffering many losses, and, after some four years, managing to “liberate” from the Duchy two minor provinces, albeit strategically advantageous ones, Samogitia and Podlasie.
Even the tale of this war is one of missed chances. Kaunas was besieged in April of 1474, and Vilnius invested in May. But Kaunas wasn't reduced to Swedish control until April of 1475, withstanding one furious assault when the storied “forty-nine” defenders managed to hold off the Swedish troops at the walls. Meanwhile, Lithuania's troops engaged in a series of battle in and around Vilnius, results of which were indecisive, but which precluded Sweden from keeping the capital invested. And after having finally won control of Kaunas, the city was almost handed back to the Duchy's forces; they invested and recaptured the city in late 1476.
Still, the inevitable result was able to poke its head out from under the detritus of poor efforts and mismanagement. Podlasie was controlled in February of 1476, Minsk fell in August of the same year, Vilnius finally fell to the Swedes in December, and Kaunas was recovered in March of 1477. Minsk, Vilnius and Kaunas all fell to assaults by the Swedish troops, who were among the first in Europe to manage such feats. The Duchy accepted the inevitable, and offered Podlasie and Samogitia as sacrifices. Sten Sture, against the advice of his nobles, but with an eye toward the restless Muscovite dukes, accepted the offer. To this day, if there is one conclusion the authors all agree upon, it is that Lithuania was at the mercy of Sweden, and Sweden had plenty of mercy.
Still, the efforts of the king did produce on opportunity relatively soon thereafter. Christian of Denmark, himself in his dotage, and looking for a final glory, sent emissaries to Gustavsson to explore the idea of obtaining information from Burgundy about the Orient and other strange places, about which the Duke of Burgundy had acquired much knowledge. Initially, it was thought of as an opportunity for military conquest. But Sture was uncertain, vassilating on the idea. By April of 1479, Christian was working instead on a purchase of information. Sture and his advisors waited to see what negotiations would provide. Here, Sture showed his vacillating character: with peaceful negotiations ongoing, he raised the concept of war, testing the wind, perhaps solely because he liked the coolness upon his finger. But dissident nobles soon placed the opportunity totally beyond reach: in the famed Oriental Map Letters, the traitor, Karl Karlsson, sold “copies” of private correspondence between Sweden and Denmark to the various crowned heads of Europe. Misinterpreting the fanciful ramblings of the Swedish king, the Burgundian Duke cancelled the negotiations. Denmark fumed, Burgundy felt betrayed, and Europe laughed. Again, opportunity walked away, leaving empty hands behind.
And, indeed, for the next ten years, it was the story of the weak king, the willful nobles and the lost opportunities that everyone read. Twice, the kingdom was entangled with foreign powers through marriages arranged by high-ranking nobles without the king's consent (Mecklemburg in 1479, Brandenburg in 1483). Twice, nobles in the court allied with a foreign power to see if they could wrest power from the weak king; in 1479 they tried to get Christian of Denmark to help overthrow Sten Sture, but the Danish king was eventually unwilling to help, perhaps happy to have a weak willed Swedish monarch remain on the throne. Two years later, the dissidents tried to get the small duchy in Pskov to provide support for an overthrow of the king; the effort was lead by the son of the Map Letters traitor, Karl Karlsson the Younger. At this point, Sten Sture did the unpredictable. Pskov was immediately invaded, the city was invested and assaulted in April of 1481, and by early May, the whole territory was annexed forcibly by Sture.
But even in this seemingly strong effort, lost opportunity shows its ugly head. For while swallowing Pskov, Sweden was allowing the Muscovite duchy to swallow most of Lithuania. Where Sweden had taken a token two provinces from the Duchy, the duke in Moskva took a full seven provinces. Suddenly, Sweden faced a formidable potential enemy, and it did so having just poked it with a sharp stick, for Moskva viewed Pskov as something other than Swedish. Having then poked the sleeping bear, the Swedish king then climbed back into his shell, and contemplated his navel.
It was almost in spite of the wandering efforts of the realm that a system of refined revenue gathering was put in place. Following a model pioneered several years earlier by the Danes, the Swedish administration had managed to regularize the reporting of revenues from merchants, using written records that could be compared from year to year. This allowed the king to begin to contemplate a new scheme of crown breweries and other mercantile efforts. Typical of the nature of the time, the king sat on the concept for a full two years without doing much of anything about it.
All journeys end, of course, even those without a fixed destination. In 1489, Sweden hoped it was coming out of the wilderness and would find a somewhat straighter road. Where that road might lead, no one knew. But compared to the inept efforts, the lost chances of the previous years, any road had to be an improvement.
