is
own land too hot for him, embarked for Sweden; but his vessel foundered,
and all on board were drowned. In April Gustavus recruited a strong
force in Dalarne and the other northern provinces, and pitched his camps
once more to the north and south of Stockholm.[66]

[Illustration]

The war had now been raging over a year, and Gustavus had experienced
the utmost difficulty in obtaining money with which to pay his men. In
the absence of any authority to levy taxes, he had resorted to the
practice of coining money, and had established mints in several places
through the realm. His coins, which were known as "klippings," consisted
of copper with a very slight admixture of silver, and twenty-four of
them were issued for a mark. As a matter of fact their actual value fell
far below what they purported to be worth. For such a practice it is
difficult to find excuse, except that it was a practice universal at the
time. Why a monarch should be justified any more than an individual in
giving a penny where he owed a pound, is difficult to comprehend. Yet
this had been for centuries the custom, and each successive monarch had
pared a little from the standard, so that in the eight hundred years
preceding Gustavus Vasa the various monetary units all over Europe had
declined to little more than an eighteenth part of their original value.
In Denmark the debasement of the currency had been more rapid than in
almost any other land, and the "klippings" of Christiern II. fell
farther below their nominal value than any coin in Europe--till the
"klippings" were issued by Gustavus, which were a trifle worse than
those of Christiern. Of course, as the standard of currency is lowered,
its buying-power gradually declines, so that ultimately, under whatever
name a particular coin may go, it will buy no more than could be had for
the actual bullion which it contains. A mark in the sixteenth century
would have bought, provided the relative supply of bullion and
merchandise remained the same, only an eighteenth part of what it bought
originally. The aim of monarchs was, therefore, to get rid of their
debased coins at more than the real value, and after they had
depreciated, to get them back at the depreciated value, melt them down,
and lower the standard further. Precisely how much Gustavus made by
tampering with the currency is impossible to say, for there is no means
of determining how many of his "klippings" he threw upon the market. It
is cl