Jens Munk.

He was not averse to hearing the truth, though, when boldly put.
When Ole Vind, a popular preacher, offended some of the nobles by
his plain speech and they complained to the King, he bade him to the
court and told him to preach the same sermon over. Master Vind was
game and the truths he told went straight home, for he knew well
where the shoe pinched. But King Christian promptly made him court
preacher. "He is the kind we need here," he said. There was never a
day that the King did not devoutly read his Bible, and he was
determined that everybody should read it the same way. The result
was a kind of Puritanism that filled the churches and compelled the
employment of men to go around with long sticks to rap the people on
the head when they fell asleep. Christian the Fourth was not the
first ruler who has tried to herd men into heaven by battalions. But
his people would have gladly gone in the fire for him. He was their
friend. When on his tramps, as likely as not he would come home
sitting beside some peasant on his load of truck, and would step off
at the palace gate with a "So long, thanks for good company!" He was
everywhere, interested in everything. In his walking-stick he
carried a foot-rule, a level, and other tools, and would stop at the
bench of a workman in the navy-yard and test his work to see how
well he was doing it. "I can lie down and sleep in any hut in the
land," was his contented boast. And he would have been safe
anywhere.

Gustav Adolf was a wise and generous foe. While he lived he refused
to listen to proposals for the partition of Denmark after King
Christian's defeat in Germany. He knew well that she was a barrier
against the ambition of the German princes and that, once she was
out of the way, Sweden's turn would come next. But when he had
fallen on the battle-field of Luetzen, and his generals, following in
his footsteps, had achieved fame and lands and the freedom of
worship for which he gave his life, the Swedish statesmen lost their
heads and dreamed of the erection of a great northern Protestant
state by the conquest of Denmark and Norway, to balance the power
of the German empire. Without warning or declaration of war a great
army was thrown into the Danish peninsula from the south. Another
advanced from Sweden upon the eastern provinces, and a fleet hired
in Holland for Swedish money came through the North Sea to help them
over to the Danish islands. If the two armies met