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1632.]
Conduct of the
levies. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. INTERNAL RELATIONS. Allocation of the
soldiery.
225
In mines and saltpetre works, factories of arms,
and ship-wliarfs, only superfluous hands were to
be subject to the levy, and all new settlers on land
were to be spared as much as possible ".
Vaga-
bonds were not to be counted in the "
rote-ring,"
but to be pressed as such to serve in the wars ;
yet they who had forfeited their honour, notorious
offenders, murderers, homicides, and adulterers,
must not be received ’. In the same way the levy
of sailors was to be made in the towns, for which
end lists were to be drawn up by ofticial persons
with the burgomasters and council. In the coun-
try the lists of the ministers were to be examined,
and deposited in the archives of the hundred. The
repugnance of the clergy to take part in such
arrangements was mitigated by the weight which
their word carried with the government, which ad-
mitted the maxim that it was their province to
look to the weal of the flock. Gustavus Adolphus
himself regarded the clergy as a kind of tribunes
of the people, and paid high respect to the order ^.
The justice of the hundred and the bailiff were to
watch over the rights both of the public and of in-
dividuals in the levies. The presence of the namnd
for the same purpose gave a popular aspect to the
whole rigorous institute; for this jury was to ex-
amine who should be levied, and their absence
made the whole proceeding illegal^. Sometimes
they outstepped the limits of their functions. Thus
we find the Dalesmen in 1614 refusing to allow the
officers to hold a levy, and proceeding to do so
themselves. Herewith the king for the time pro-
fessed himself satisfied, in order to quiet pi-evious
disturbances \ arising partly from the weight of
the taxes for which the Dalesmen accused the no-
bility 2, partly from the punishments inflicted on
their deserters who had returned home. A revolt
of more consequence broke out in 1624 on the
borders of Blekinge, in Smaland, where the soldiers
mutinied against their colonel, Patrick Ruthven, a
Scotsman. The ringleader now, as formerly in
the Dacke feud, with which the king compares this
insurrection, was a foreigner, but it was imme-
diately suppressed by the punishment of its in-
stigators. A number of the insurgent peasants were
removed with their households to Ingermanland;
upon the promise of the rest to remam tranquil,
the king ordered the inquiry to be dropped. In
like manner he treated the insurrectionary move-
ment of 1627, in the parish of Orsa in the Dales,
at the head of which was a tailor. The instigators
were condemned to death ; four of them sent to
Ingermanland, then the Siberia of Sweden; and
the remainder pardoned, the king issuing a letter
6 In the Register for 1627, under Feb. 10, is preserved a
special letter of the king in regard to such exemption for
new settlers in Verraeland, Nerike, West-Gothland, and
Dalesland. It states that the king had himself ordered
these new settlements, with which good progress was made.
’
Reg. for 161S, quoted in the History of the Sutherman-
land Regiment, ii. 43. Those of each rote paid what was
called rote-money to the person on whom the choice fell.
8 "
King Gustavus Adolphus kept the clergy constantly in
good humour ; for they are as it were tribunes of the people,"
said old count Jacob de la Gardie in the council, in 1645.
Palnisk. MSS. t. 190. Several of the magnates therefore
looked on the clergy with little affection.
" In Ens/land,"
said count Peter Brahe in the council, in 1650,
" all men
have been made as it were swine-feet at the instigation of
the clergy."
that no one should reproach the Dalesmen with
the misconduct of this rebellious company *. In
the following year the hundreds of Kind and
Redveg in West-Gothland refused to pay the poll-
tax. The king wrote from Prussia, that this was
caused by the " unreasonable dunning of the in-
spectors," wherefore,
" since the people were will-
ing and good in themselves," these must cease their
barbarous proceedings by stroke and thrust, or be
punished ;
in case of need, troops,
"
yet not of the
same province," might be employed against the
revolters. The peasantry returned to their obe-
dience, on a written representation from the king,
that the war was waged for the defence of their
Christian religion *.
On the issue of the levy just described, light is
thrown by some remarks of Axel Oxenstierna.
" When king Gustavus Adolphus set about the
great Prussian war, a levy was voted by the tale of
heads (mantal), and the crown at first obtained by
one year’s conscription over the whole kingdom
15,000 men; from that of the next, 12,000; but
afterwards, when every man had time to think of
some evasion, not more than 6000 or 7000." He
adds: "
Levy by the tale of heads was the old cus-
tom, and the king vainly endeavoured to persuade
the people to allow it to be made by the number of
farmsteads (gardetal), so that the occupants might
have to agree upon a man with one another^."
The frauds alluded to were, doubtless, of various
kinds: we will mention but one, since it
certainly
contributed to that inequality in taxation which
formed, in respect to the scot-farms (skattehem-
man), a subject of complaint. It consisted in the
owners of small allotments returning themselves as
proprietors of full yeomen’s holdings, since it was
a principle in conducting the levy to take the
smaller landholders before the greater ^. The view
of Gustavus Adolphus, that several farmsteads
should combine to furnish one conscript, was
thoroughly carried out by Charles XI. through the
contracts for soldiers, pursuant to which the farm-
steads furnished and maintained the soldiers with-
out diminution of the crown revenues. If we
consider the Swedish system of conscription as
an obligation attached to the soil, and allocated
according to the provinces, for raising and main-
taining the army, Gustavus Adolphus is the founder
of the work completed by Charles XI. It was new
in Europe, and peculiar to Sweden. " Some king-
doms are of such a constitution," said Axel Oxen-
stiei’na in the council in 1650, "that landed estate
5 See the complaints of 1613, when this sometimes oc-
curred, in Hallenberg, ii. 715.
’
Hallenberg, iii. 331. It is mentioned on this occasion,
that in the Dale parishes there ^vere chosen presidents of
twenty-four communities, who were called Oath-sworn.
2 The provost Elof Terserus, of Leksand, known for the
reverence paid to both himself and his wife (called by the
people
"
grandmother") in these parts, caused a defence of
the nobility to be read in the churches, by which, however,
the Dalesmen appear to have been little edified.
3
Reg. for 1627.
i To the council of state. Dirschau, July 24, 1628. Reg.
On Sept. 4 he exempted the Dales, partly to the half, partly
to the whole amount, from the poll-tax.
5 Axel Oxenstierna in the council, 1642. Palmsk. MSS.
t. 130. (Gardetal, yard tale.)
^
Compare Frosteri, Krigs Lagfarenhet (Legal Practice in
Military Concerns).
Q
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