ority of
all classes which adhered to Sigismund on his landing in Sweden in 1598
indisputably behaved like loyal subjects. But Sigismund was both an
alien and a heretic to the majority of the Swedish nation, and his
formal deposition by the _Riksdag_ in 1599 was, in effect, a natural
vindication and legitimation of Charles's position. Finally, the diet of
Linkoping (Feb. 24, 1600) declared that Sigismund and his posterity had
forfeited the Swedish throne, and, passing over duke John, the second
son of John III., a youth of ten, recognized duke Charles as their
sovereign under the title of Charles IX.

Charles's short reign was an uninterrupted warfare. The hostility of
Poland and the break up of Russia involved him in two overseas contests
for the possession of Livonia and Ingria, while his pretensions to
Lapland brought upon him a war with Denmark in the last year of his
reign. In all these struggles he was more or less unsuccessful, owing
partly to the fact that he had to do with superior generals (e.g.
Chodkiewicz and Christian IV.) and partly to sheer ill-luck. Compared
with his foreign policy, the domestic policy of Charles IX. was
comparatively unimportant. It aimed at confirming and supplementing what
had already been done during his regency. Not till the 6th of March
1604, after Duke John had formally renounced his rights to the throne,
did Charles IX. begin to style himself king. The first deed in which the
title appears is dated the 20th of March 1604; but he was not crowned
till the 15th of March 1607. Four and a half years later Charles IX.
died at Nykoping (Oct. 30, 1611). As a ruler he is the link between his
great father and his still greater son. He consolidated the work of
Gustavus Vasa, the creation of a great Protestant state: he prepared the
way for the erection of the Protestant empire of Gustavus Adolphus.
Swedish historians have been excusably indulgent to the father of their
greatest ruler. Indisputably Charles was cruel, ungenerous and
vindictive; yet he seems, at all hazards, strenuously to have
endeavoured to do his duty during a period of political and religious
transition, and, despite his violence and brutality, possessed many of
the qualities of a wise and courageous statesman. By his first wife
Marie, daughter of the elector palatine Louis VI., he had six children,
of whom only one daughter, Catherine, survived; by his second wife,
Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein-Gottorp