Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/30

 ject to slavery in almost all the northern countries, were admitted to a share in the administration.

About the year 1492, this nation, so jealous of its liberty, and which still piques itself on having conquered Rome about thirteen hundred years ago, was subjected to the yoke by a woman, and by a people less powerful than the Swedes.

Margaret of Waldemar, the Semiramis of the North, and Queen of Denmark and Norway, subdued Sweden by force and stratagem, and united these three extensive kingdoms into one mighty monarchy. After her death, Sweden was rent by civil wars; it alternately threw off and submitted to the Danish yoke; was sometimes governed by kings, and sometimes by administrators. About the year 1520, this unhappy kingdom was horribly harassed by two tyrants: the one was Christian II., King of Denmark, a monster whose character was entirely composed of vices, without the least ingredient of virtue: the other an archbishop of Upsala, and primate of the kingdom, as barbarous as the former. These two, by mutual agreement, caused the consuls and the magistrates of Stockholm, together with ninety-four senators, to be seized in one day, and to be executed by the hand of the common hangman, under the frivolous pretence that they were excommunicated by the pope, for having dared to defend the rights of the state against the encroachments of the archbishop.

While these two men, unanimous in their oppressive measures, and disagreeing only about the division of the spoil, domineered over Sweden with all the tyranny of the most absolute despotism, and