who had signed under protest, and another Bishop who now joined himself with Trolle as accuser. The following day, November 8, at nine o'clock, they were brought before a Court of twelve ecclesiastics, one of whom was Trolle, who thus became a judge in his own cause. The single question was put to them by Beldenak, whether men who had raised their hands against the Pope and the Holy Roman Church were not heretics? They could give but one answer. Thereupon they were told that they had condemned themselves, and were declared guilty of notorious heresy. On the very same day, at noon, they were brought forth into the market-place and there beheaded one by one before the eyes of the citizens. The Bishops of Strengnaes and Skara were the first to suffer; they were followed by the rest of the signatories, amongst whom was the father of Gustaf Eriksson, afterwards King of Sweden; and these by others of the principal nobles and citizens, who showed their sympathy too plainly, until the square ran with blood. A spectator counted more than ninety corpses before the day was done; and the ghastly work was not confined to one time or place. The bodies lay where they had fallen for three days, after which they were conveyed outside the town and burnt; the bodies of Sten Sture and of his young son, born since his excommunication, being exhumed and thrown upon the pyre. It was hoped that this terrible deed, which is known as the Stockholm bath of blood (Stockholms Blodbad), had secured Sweden to the Danes; as a matter of fact, as it has been said, the Union of Kalmar was drowned in it for ever. Fierce revolts broke out everywhere, and before long Sweden was independent under its own King Gustavus.
Christian was a more successful ruler at home than he had been in Sweden. He was well aware of the evils under which Denmark was groaning, and was resolved to provide a remedy. As the price of his election to the Crown he had been compelled to accept not only the conditions which had bound his father, but others even more onerous. One of these gave the judicial power entirely into the hands of the magnates; another nullified the royal right of conferring nobility; the last of all provided that if he broke his agreement in any particular, "then shall all the inhabitants of the kingdom faithfully resist the same without loss of honour and without in any wise by so doing breaking their oath of fealty to us." But from the first Christian treated his "capitulation" as a dead letter, and endeavoured in every way to increase the power of the burghers and the peasants. Himself brought up in the household of a burgher, Hans Metzenheim, surnamed Bogbinder, he surrounded himself with advisers of ignoble and often of foreign birth: Sigbrit, the mother of his beautiful Dutch mistress Dyveke, Diederik Slaghök, who has been mentioned already, a Malmö merchant named Hans Mikkelsen, and many more. Mother Sigbrit, as she was called, a woman of great capacity, was his chief counsellor in all fiscal and commercial matters. By her advice he
