Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/549

Rh over the bishops and the clergy, which was in effect gaining the greater part of the people, and she was unanimously elected to the crown of Denmark. But her ambition grasped at that of Norway also; she sent deputies to solicit the states, gained over the chief people by money, and found means to render herself mistress of the army and garrisons, so that, had the nation been otherwise disposed, she would in the end have succeeded; but she gained them over to her measures as easily as she had those of Denmark. The Norwegians, perceiving that the succession was in danger of being extinct, entreated her to secure it by an advantageous marriage, but she received the proposal coldly. To satisfy, however, their desire, she consented to appoint a successor; but fixed on one so young, that she should have full time to satiate her ambition, before he could be of age to take any share in the government, yet, as being the true heir, and grandson of her sister, she contrived to make it appear more their choice than her own.

She recommended herself so strongly to the Swedes, who were oppressed by their own king Albert, who had gone to war with her, that they renounced their allegiance to that prince and made her a solemn tender of their crown, thinking that her good sense would set bounds to her ambition, and prevent any encroachment on their rights. She accepted the offer, marched to their assistance, and defeated Albert, who was deposed after a war of seven years in 1388; and obliged him, after a seven years imprisonment, and solemn renunciation of his crown, to retire to the dominions of his brother the duke of Mecklenburg. On this revolution in Sweden, Margaret assumed the reins of government, and was distinguished