s Trolle in Stockholm cathedral, and
took the usual oath to rule the realm through native-born Swedes alone,
according to prescription. The next three days were given up to
banqueting, but on the 7th of November "an entertainment of another sort
began." On the evening of that day Christian summoned his captains to a
private conference at the palace, the result of which was quickly
apparent, for at dusk a band of Danish soldiers, with lanterns and
torches, broke into the great hall and carried off several carefully
selected persons. By 10 o'clock the same evening the remainder of the
king's guests were safely under lock and key. All these persons had
previously been marked down on Archbishop Trolle's proscription list. On
the following day a council, presided over by Trolle, solemnly
pronounced judgment of death on the proscribed, as manifest heretics. At
12 o'clock that night the patriotic bishops of Skara and Straengnaes were
led out into the great square and beheaded. Fourteen noblemen, three
burgomasters, fourteen town-councillors and about twenty common citizens
of Stockholm were then drowned or decapitated. The executions continued
throughout the following day; in all, about eighty-two people are said
to have been thus murdered. Moreover, Christian revenged himself upon
the dead as well as upon the living, for Sten Sture's body was dug up
and burnt, as well as the body of his little child. Dame Christina and
many other noble Swedish ladies were sent prisoners to Denmark. It has
well been said that the manner of this atrocious deed (the "Stockholm
Massacre" as it is generally called) was even more detestable than the
deed itself. Christian suppressed his political opponents under the
pretence of defending an ecclesiastical system which in his heart he
despised. Even when it became necessary to make excuses for his crime,
we see the same double-mindedness. Thus, while in a proclamation to the
Swedish people he represented the massacre as a measure necessary to
avoid a papal interdict, in his apology to the pope for the decapitation
of the innocent bishops he described it as an unauthorized act of
vengeance on the part of his own people.

It was with his brain teeming with great designs that Christian II.
returned to his native kingdom. That the welfare of his dominions was
dear to him there can be no doubt. Inhuman as he could be in his wrath,
in principle he was as much a humanist as any of his most enlightened
cont