some of them being built after Christian's own designs. The
formation of a national army was more difficult. Christian had to depend
mainly upon hired troops, supported by native levies recruited for the
most part from the peasantry on the crown domains. His first experiment
with his newly organized army was successful. In the war with Sweden,
generally known as the "Kalmar War," because its chief operation was the
capture by the Danes of Kalmar, the eastern fortress of Sweden,
Christian compelled Gustavus Adolphus to give way on all essential
points (treaty of Knaered, 20th of January 1613). He now turned his
attention to Germany. His object was twofold: first, to obtain the
control of the great German rivers the Elbe and the Weser, as a means of
securing his dominion of the northern seas; and secondly, to acquire the
secularized German bishoprics of Bremen and Werden as appanages for his
younger sons. He skilfully took advantage of the alarm of the German
Protestants after the battle of White Hill in 1620, to secure the
coadjutorship to the see of Bremen for his son Frederick (September
1621), a step followed in November by a similar arrangement as to
Werden; while Hamburg by the compact of Steinburg (July 1621) was
induced to acknowledge the Danish overlordship of Holstein. The growing
ascendancy of the Catholics in North Germany in and after 1623 almost
induced Christian, for purely political reasons, to intervene directly
in the Thirty Years' War. For a time, however, he stayed his hand, but
the urgent solicitations of the western powers, and, above all, his fear
lest Gustavus Adolphus should supplant him as the champion of the
Protestant cause, finally led him to plunge into war against the
combined forces of the emperor and the League, without any adequate
guarantees of co-operation from abroad. On the 9th of May 1625 Christian
quitted Denmark for the front. He had at his disposal from 19,000 to
25,000 men, and at first gained some successes; but on the 27th of
August 1626 he was utterly routed by Tilly at Lutter-am-Barenberge, and
in the summer of 1627 both Tilly and Wallenstein, ravaging and burning,
occupied the duchies and the whole peninsula of Jutland. In his
extremity Christian now formed an alliance with Sweden (1st of January
1628), whereby Gustavus Adolphus pledged himself to assist Denmark with
a fleet in case of need, and shortly afterwards a Swedo-Danish army and
fleet compelled Wallenstein to raise th