was true, was given only by halves, and from selfish
motives; they did not forget their profit on the arms, purchased Swedish
iron and copper for klippings, with which worthless coins they came
well provided, and exacted a dear price for their men, ships, and
military stores, refusing even, it is said, to supply Gustavus with two
pieces of cannon at a decisive moment, although upon the proffered
security of two of the royal castles.

This occurred on occasion of a second, and this time unsuccessful,
attempt made by Norby to relieve Stockholm; in which he was only saved
from ruin by the refusal of the admiral of Lubeck to attack. Meanwhile
Gustavus, despite the losses which he sustained by sallies, pushed his
three camps by degrees close to the town, then covering little more than
the island still contains, the town properly so called. At length, after
Kingsholm, Langholm, Sodermalm, Waldemar's Island, now the Zoological
Gardens, had been connected by block-houses and chains, the place was
invested on all sides. Yet it held out through the winter, until the
news of Christian's fate, joined to the pangs of hunger, deprived the
garrison of all spirit for further resistance.

He did not dare to trust either his subjects or his soldiers, collected
twenty ships, in which he embarked the public records, with the treasure
and crown jewels, his consort and child, and his adviser Sigbert, who
was concealed in his chest. Deserting his kingdom, he sailed away in the
face of the whole population of Copenhagen, April 20, 1523.

Thus ended the reign of Christian II, a king in whom one knows not which
rivets the attention, the multiplied undertakings he commenced and
abandoned in a career so often stained with blood, his audacity, his
feebleness, or that misery of many years by which he was to expiate a
short and ill-used tenure of power. There are men who, like the storm
birds before the tempest, appear in history as foretokens of the
approaching outburst of great convulsions. Of such a nature was
Christian, who, tossed hither and thither between all the various
currents of his time without central consistence, awakened alternately
the fear or pity of the beholders.

Frederick I, who was chosen to succeed him in Denmark, wrote to the
estates of Sweden, demanding that in accordance with the stipulations of
the Union of Kalmar he might also be acknowledged king in Sweden. They
replied "that they had elected Gustavus Ericson to be Swe