once the power of Denmark was divided it could only be a question of tame. On June 20, 1523, Gustavus entered Stockholm, and by July 7 the last Danish garrison in Sweden, that of Kalmar, had capitulated. Meanwhile Gustavus was no longer merely the leader of a band of insurgents. On July 14, 1522, he was able to issue a proclamation as the recognised commander of five provinces. An assembly at Vadstena on August 24 is said to have offered him the crown, which he refused, accepting however the office of Administrator, and adding that it would be time enough to choose a King when they had driven the foe out of the land. A general diet, so-called, met at Strengnäs on May 27, 1523. It is not clear whether the few magnates who still survived were summoned, but the diet nominated a new Riksrad, and then, on June 7 proceeded to elect Gustavus as King of Sweden.
The new King's position was no easy one. Although he had been duly elected he had little power; the peasants who were his strongest supporters were impatient of control, and the older nobles looked on him with jealousy, and almost with contempt. Sweden was so devastated by the war as to be practically bankrupt; the fields lay fallow, the mines were unworked, and many of the cities, Stockholm in particular, were desolated. The Swedish possessions in Finland were still in the enemy's hands; and the only ally of the Swedes, the city of Lübeck, had helped them in pursuance of its own schemes of aggrandisement, and was now claiming large sums of money in return for advances made and aid given during the course of the struggle. To appease them, the diet of Strengnäs had granted to Lübeck, Danzig, and their allies a monopoly of Swedish commerce; but ambassadors still followed Gustavus wherever he went, and urged the speedy payment of the account. To eke out the scarcity of money, Gustavus, like most of the kings of his day and to an even greater extent, had adopted the plan of debasing the coinage; but the effect was to inspire distrust, and before long he was compelled to circulate his Clipping's at a greatly depreciated rate.
He was at the end of his resources, and the only remedy seemed to be to turn to the Church, which was still as wealthy as ever. The Bishops as a whole were not unfriendly. Johan Brask, Bishop of Linkœping, an astute and far-seeing patriot, had early thrown in his lot on the winning side with Gustavus; the Danish Bishops of Strengnäs and Skara had been replaced by Bishops elect who were favourable to him, and the vacant sees of Vesteräs, Abo, and Upsala (from the last-named of which Gustaf Trolle had fled) were likely to be filled in the same way. Moreover, Gustavus himself was just then in good odour in Rome. He had indeed been accused of heresy by Christian II in 1521; and his sojourn at and alliance with Lübeck lent colour to the charge. But his cause found a staunch defender in the famous Joannes Magni (Johan Magnusson), a Swedish scholar and canon of Linkœping who had lived away from his country for seventeen years without losing any of
