erously carried the young patriot off to Denmark.
In the following year he escaped in the disguise of a
peasant.

Sweden was conquered by Christian in 1520, and in the same
year, having taken Stockholm, he ordered there the massacre
of the nobility, known as the "Blood-bath." Ninety of the
leading men of Sweden, including the father of Gustavus,
were put to death. This outrage provoked an uprising, in
which the province of Dalecarlia bore the leading part, and
its people followed Gustavus in a movement for independence.
He soon gathered an army of his adherents, called
"Dalesmen"--men of the dales--strong enough to meet the
enemy.

Gustavus Vasa is not only famed as the deliverer of Sweden,
but also as the promoter of popular education in his
country, and for the support which he gave to the
Reformation, he himself having early embraced the doctrines
of Luther.

The heroic aspects of this Scandinavian patriot and King
have alike endeared his memory to his own people and made
his fame to endure in the world annals of mankind. His last
appearance and address before the estates of his kingdom, in
the closing year of his life, have been finely commemorated
in art, with a commingling of power and pathos, the aged
monarch taking leave of his people and his throne. "He took
his place in the hall of assemblage, accompanied by all his
sons. The King having saluted the estates, they listened for
the last time to the accents of that eloquence so well liked
by the people."

[Illustration: Gustavus I (Vasa) addressing his last meeting of the
Estates

Painting by L. Hersent]

The most influential yeomen of all the parishes in the eastern and
western dales elected Gustavus to be "lord and chieftain over them and
the commons of the realm of Sweden." Some scholars who had arrived from
Westeras brought with them new accounts of the tyranny of Christian.
Gustavus placed them amid a ring of peasants to tell their story and
answer the questions of the crowd. Old men represented it as a
comfortable sign for the people, that as often as Gustavus discoursed to
them the north wind always blew, "which was an old token to them that
God would grant them good success." Sixteen active peasants were
appointed to be his bodyguard; and two hundred more youths who joined
him were called his foot-goers.