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.Understand-ably, the old king was often troubled and drowned his sorrows inwine.Otherwise he passed his time in edifying reading, short excur-sions, and hunting.He seems to have accepted the verdict of hiscontemporaries, that his fate was an act of God.Gustaf Vasa s last years were filled with angst, sorrow, and care.Wher-ever he turned there was cause for concern.On his deathbed hewondered aloud, How will it go with you, you Swedes, under anew regiment? You will scarcely be able to understand this twistedworld s affairs. He had made his way with prudence, guile, suspicion, demagogy,and ruthlessness, and in the process he had freed the kingdom fromDanish domination, Roman interference, and Hanseatic oppression.In the latter part of his reign Sweden functioned as one vast estate,and there was not a detail in its management that did not engage him,almost to the very end.As an early practitioner of micromanagement,he remained dissatisfied and querulous.If he had not had so manyfaithless bailiffs, he complained, he would have been much richer.He tried to arrange a trouble-free succession, but here, too, heforesaw problems.His children were often at loggerheads.The oldking ruled them as he ruled the rest of his subjects, but confessedthey were of slight consolation.In June 1560, he communicatedhis final will and testament in the great hall of Stockholm Castle,surrounded by the estates and his four sons.Because Sweden wasnow a hereditary kingdom, the crown would pass to his eldest son,Erik; the younger sons each received a duchy.The king had giventhe princes a practical education in their responsibilities and warnedthem of treacherous Danes, barbarous Muscovites, a rapacious Hanse,and power-hungry prelates.The training was not a complete success;the young lords did not seem to understand the need for ambiguityand duplicity.The king s last days were filled with portents.A comet appearedwith a tail like a lance; weeping was heard from the earth at Svartsjö; 492 The Settlement, 1536 1545there were storms and fires. That concerns me, said the king.Hetook to his bed in late August.He rose one more time, to test hiswaning strength. O, what a difficult pilgrimage that was, and for meof little remission, he said after he returned to bed.Master Johannes,his chaplain and physician, asked him whether he wished to confess;His Grace would not hear of it.It was reported, though, that theold lord died an edifying death.Asked whether he believed in JesumChristum, the king answered a loud yes with almost his final breath.He died on September 29, 1560.Gustaf Vasa and Christian III might have jibbed at the inclusion ofChristian II in their company as one of the founders of ReformationScandinavia.Gustaf Vasa had, after all, made a career of the contrastbetween the bad old days of Christian the Tyrant and his own goldenage.Christian III, a more equitable man, probably accepted the con-temporary view, that God had used Christian II as a rod to chastisehis people and then punished the king for his tyranny.Neither princeever admitted that he had taken over the political program of Chris-tian II.With the perspective of five hundred years, though, there canbe little doubt that this was what had happened.Long before he became king, Christian II was involved in the con-flict between the crown and the privileged orders.From his father,King Hans, he inherited policies intended to consolidate the powerof the crown, and he had pursued those policies with far greaterruthlessness than King Hans.His methods were his undoing, but thevalue of his program could not be denied; there was no other wayto curb the anarchy characteristic of the final phase of the Unionof Kalmar.The crown would check the privileged orders, ally itselfwith commoners, and transform itself into a hereditary monarchy.Church authority was to be brought under state control.The fief sys-tem, vital to the prosperity of the nobility, was to be reformed alonglines amenable to centralized direction, and manned with biddableservants.Where possible, councils of the realm were to be tamed.Trade legislation would be used to ally townsfolk with the crownagainst the privileged orders and the Hanse
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