"Engelbrekt och bondeupproren" (Engelbrekt and the Peasant Uprisings) is a book by Swedish history professor Dick Harrison, unfortunately only available in Swedish. Harrison must *like* to write about the 15th century Swedish civil wars and unrests, since this is probably the third or fourth time he does so in book format. Or even more, if you count all his partially overlapping popularized books published by Historiska Media.
1434 was the year when Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson started a rebellion of peasants and miners in the Swedish area known as Bergslagen. Engelbrekt acquired legendary status already during his lifetime, and became a virtual martyr after his death in 1436 at the hands of an assassin (ironically, there was no direct connection between the murder and the rebellion). He was worshipped as a saint by many Swedish peasants during the Middle Ages, and is still regarded as a national hero by virtually everyone in Sweden from left to right. The meeting at Arboga in 1435 where Engelbrekt was appointed supreme commander of all Swedish military forces was long regarded as "the first Swedish Parliament". Engelbrekt´s uprising was directed against the unpopular union king Erik of Pomerania, who ruled both Sweden, Norway and Denmark, usually promoting the interests of the latter, but above all his own family interests, at the expense of both the Swedish nobility, clergy and the common people. What began as a peasant uprising soon turned into a general war of liberation against Erik and his foreign bailiffs. The details need not preoccupy us here.
More importantly, the success of the uprising (Erik of Pomerania de facto lost his Swedish throne) marks the beginning of a remarkable period in Swedish history, which would last for almost 100 years, during which the peasantry played a central role in Swedish politics. The peasants were well organized, armed, and quite conscious of their power to make or break kings and lords. Sweden was extremely politically unstable, with constant wars against Denmark and civil wars between different Swedish factions. Coups, counter-coups and shifting alliances were part and parcel of the political landscape. What makes the period interesting is that the various factions of the nobility were forced to appeal to the peasantry for military support. Some nobles could almost be described as "peasant-friendly", such as Erik Puke, the de facto successor of Engelbrekt as main rebel leader. But even nobles who would rather do without peasant support, such as the treacherous power-player and opportunist Karl Knutsson (Bonde), who was Swedish king three times, eventually realized the need for it. Indeed, even the Danish kings, who tried to take back control over Sweden, sometimes appealed to the peasantry to back their cause.
The original reason behind the peasant unrest may have been high taxes and unpopular foreign bailiffs, but eventually the peasantry demanded de facto self-government in their respective communities, some kind of say in the appointments of regents, and general respect for their social class. (Harrison seems to regard the Västerås meeting of 1466 as the first Swedish Parliament, since the peasantry was heavily represented.) During some periods, taxation was virtually zero. No man could be drafted by force into the army, and in some regions, there was a lucrative cross-border trade with the territories still under Danish control. The peasants and burghers of the border regions had more in common with each other than with their respective rulers in far-away capitals.
The beginning of the end of this "golden age" came in 1520, when the Danish king Kristian II decided to subdue Sweden once and for all, and treacherously executed about 100 nobles, burghers and others after a sham trial in Stockholm (the Stockholm bloodbath). He then turned his attention to Bergslagen, and issued a series of provocative demands, including royal control of the mines and the disarmament of the peasantry. In response to this and other outrages, the Swedish peasantry once again rose in rebellion, this time under the leadership of Gustav Eriksson (Vasa). Unfortunately, Gustav Vasa was no Engelbrekt or Puke. As regent and later king (1521-1560), he turned on his earstwhile allies and created a centralized monarchy financed by heavy taxation of the peasantry, state control of mining, and massive confiscations of Catholic church property (Sweden became Lutheran during this period). Attempts to unseat Gustav Vasa were met by hard repression. The last "medieval" peasant rising in Sweden was the Dacke War (Dackefejden) in 1542-43. This time, the peasants really did fight alone, with no noble faction supporting them.
During the 17th century, Sweden became a heavily centralized, autocratic and militarized state, in which the peasants were expected to obey, pay their taxes and get their sons drafted. During the 100-year long "great power period" (circa 1618-1718), Sweden lost one third of its male population due to constant wars! Yet, there were no peasant rebellions anymore. This is remarkable, since constant peasant uprisings (and other civil wars) constantly plagued the rest of Europe. It´s also remarkable given the fighting traditions of the Swedish peasantry and certain other groups. What on earth happened? The explanation favored by the author is that the Swedish high nobility was pragmatically smarter than many other European elite groups. Even Gustav Vasa, no friend of seditious commoners, permitted the peasants to have a certain amount of representation in Parliament. Sweden´s "peasant estate" was almost unique in Europe, and gave the peasantry a certain amount of room to voice their grievances. On the local level, the organ of local self-government known as sockenstämma (a kind of parish council) was often dominated by the peasants. Both the peasant estate in the Diet and the parish councils functioned as a kind of safety valve. Somehow, they did manage to blow off sufficient steam to avoid active armed resistance against the regime. Of course, there was also a lot of passive resistance to the early modern state, including a wide-spread refusal to be drafted in eastern Finland (where escape into the woods was relatively simple). But no actual uprisings. The last large-scale peasant uprising in Sweden was "the Great Dala Dance" in 1743, at a time when the Swedish regime had become less repressive, and the nobility was split into warring factions. Yet, it too failed.
Dick Harrison ends the book by pointing out that the 19th century saw a transition from peasant violence to urban-worker violence. Weirdly, he mentions the Fersen murder of 1810 as an example of the generally unsafe and riotous conditions of the capital, Stockholm. Ahem, surely a history professor should at least suspect a conspiracy in this case? Axel von Fersen was a prominent noble who belonged to the "wrong" faction in an internal elite power struggle. I´m not the only one to suspect that the mob who killed Fersen was at somebody´s payroll (not to mention the "guards" who didn´t lift a finger to defend him). That being said, Harrison is of course right in a general way. The 19th century saw the dawn of new struggles. As the peasantry became increasingly more conservative, the fallen mantle of Engelbrekt was taken up by...the working class.
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