Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/99

  to the crown in 1202, and who was the most prosperous and afterwards the most unfortunate of Danish kings. He conquered Holstein and Pomerania, and in 1217 the emperor recognized his authority over a large part of the north of Germany,—all in fact north of the Elbe. Valdemar then pushed his forces into Norway and Sweden, but with less success; but in 1219 he set out on a vast crusade against the Pagans in Esthonia, the whole of which he overran, forcibly converting the inhabitants. It was in this war that Denmark commenced to use the Dannebrog, or national standard, a white cross on a blood-red field. On his return, in the midst of his magnificent success, a great calamity befell Valdemar; he was treacherously captured at Lyö in 1223 by the duke of Schwerin, and imprisoned for several years in a dungeon in Mecklenburg; but he finally escaped, and ruled until his death in 1241.

The chief mercantile intercourse of Denmark in those times was with Lübeck and the north-west of Germany. To the Baltic Lübeck was nearly what Venice was to the Mediterranean, the earliest commercial town of consequence. There was also some traffic from Denmark to the mouths of the Vistula,—the name of Dantzic, or Dansvik (Danish town or port), indicating that a Danish colony, aware of the advantages of the situation, had established itself there.

During the same period (the 14th century), the association of the Hanse Towns had acquired considerable strength, and asserted strenuously the freedom of commerce in the north of Europe. Denmark, commanding the entrance into the Baltic, was the power most interested in laying merchant vessels under a toll or regular contribution; and the result was repeated contentions, followed at times by open war, between the Danish Government and this powerful confederacy.

The most important event, however, in the history of Denmark, or indeed of Scandinavia, in the Middle Ages, was the conjunct submission of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to one sovereign, by the compact or union of Calmar, in the year 1397. Valdemar III., king of Denmark, having died in the year 1378, left two daughters, of whom the second, Margaret, was married to Hakon VI., king of Norway. On the demise of her husband the government of Norway remained in her hands; and afterwards, on the death of her son, who had been declared king of Denmark, the States, or Parliament, of that country fixed this princess on the throne, on her consenting to extend and secure their rights and privileges. The States of Norway followed their example; so that Margaret, finding herself seated on the thrones of Denmark and Norway, directed her attention to that of Sweden, the succession to which would have fallen to her husband Hakon had he survived. The Swedes were divided into two parties—that of Margaret, and that of a duke of Mecklenburg. An appeal to arms took place, and the result was favourable to the cause of the queen, her competitor being defeated and made prisoner. In 1397 the States of the three kingdoms were convoked at Calmar, a town situated in the south of Sweden. There they concurred in passing the Act known as the Union of Calmar, by which the three kingdoms were henceforth to be under one sovereign, who should, however, be bound to govern each according to its respective laws and customs. To guard against their separation, it was enacted that, if a sovereign should leave several sons, one of them only should be the ruler of the three kingdoms, and in the event of the reigning king or queen dying without children, the senators and parliamentary deputies of the three kingdoms should jointly proceed to the election of another joint sovereign.

Such were the precautions taken by Margaret, who has been called the Semiramis of the North, in order to banish

war and political dissensions from Scandinavia. For a time they were successful, and peace and concord were maintained during the lifetime of the queen and her two successors. But the union, as regarded the Swedes, was far from being cordial; they submitted reluctantly to a foreign family, and considered themselves as obliged to act in subserviency to the political views of Denmark. At last the severity, or rather the cruelty, of one of the Danish kings, Christian II., and the appearance of an able assertor of Swedish independence in Gustavus Vasa, led to an insurrection, which, beginning in the northern province of Dalecarlia, extended throughout Sweden, and led to a definitive separation of the two crowns in the year 1523.

In 1490 the reigning king of Denmark made a commercial treaty with Henry VII. of England, by which the English engaged to pay the Sound dues on all vessels entering or returning from the Baltic; and in return they were allowed to have mercantile consuls in the chief sea ports of Denmark and Norway. By this time the extension of trade had given rise in Denmark, as in England, to a middle class, among whom the sovereign found in each country the means of balancing the political weight of the nobility; hence a grant was made by the kings of Denmark of various privileges to traders, and of relief from a number of local imposts on the transit of merchandise.

The rude habits of the age were strongly marked by the difficulty which the Danish Government found in putting a stop to the practice of plundering merchantmen shipwrecked on the coast. The practice was to collect in the vicinity of a wreck such a number of the inhabitants as to prevent the master or mariners from opposing the seizure of the merchandise. Even bishops residing on the coast, though humane in their treatment of the crews, did not scruple to aid in taking forcible possession of the cargo; and it is a remarkable fact, that a law passed by the king, about the year 1521, for the prevention of these practices, was abrogated and publicly burned at the instance of the barons and clergy a few years after, when a new sovereign had succeeded to the crown.

The doctrines of the Reformation found their way into Denmark at an early date. Frederick I., who began to reign in 1525, and had formerly been duke of Holstein, in that year embraced the Protestant religion. The inhabitants of Denmark being divided between the Catholics and Protestants, Frederick began by an edict for tolerating both religions. An assembly of the States, or Parliament, next passed a solemn Act for the free preaching of the Protestant faith, and for allowing ecclesiastics of any class to marry and reside in any part of the kingdom. The consequence of this was a reduction of the number of the inmates of abbeys, monasteries, and convents, along with the general diffusion of the Lutheran faith throughout the kingdom. This rapid progress enabled the succeeding sovereign Christian III., to act like Henry VIII. of England, by annexing the church-lands to the Crown, and strengthening the power of the sovereign at the expense of that of the clergy.

The great religious war which broke out in 1618 for the first time fixed the attention of Europe on Denmark. The victories of the imperial general Tilly, and of Maximilian of Bavaria, over the Protestants, appeared to make the Emperor Ferdinand, who was the head of the Catholic party, complete master of Germany, when Christian IV. of Denmark, encouraged by England and France, determined to take up the Protestant cause as a principal in the general contest. But being weakly supported by his allies, the Danish king, after one year's campaign, was obliged to flee before the victorious army of Wallenstein (1626), and to sue for peace, which was concluded at Lübeck in 1629. By the stipulations of this peace Denmark bound itself never