A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Russian and Swedish Empires 271

a relatively poor state, but revenues from lucrative copper mines, the sale of
Swedish iron and steel—the finest in Europe—and trade with Muscovy and
then Russia and the West generated enough revenue to finance expansion.
But expansion had its costs: Queen Christina (ruled 1632—1654) raised
money by selling almost two-thirds of the royal lands, with Swedish nobles
becoming the main beneficiaries. Swedish peasants, who had their own
Estate in the Swedish Diet (assembly), demanded in vain the return of all
alienated lands to the throne. The lower Estates did not dare challenge royal
prerogatives: “We esteem Your Majesty’s royal power as the buttress of our
liberties, the one being bound up in the other, and both standing or falling
together.”
Emboldened by his fledgling empire, King Charles XI (ruled 1660-1697)
in the 1680s established absolute rule in Sweden. He overcame the resis­

tance of the wealthiest nobles by winning the support of their jealous col­
leagues of lesser means, as well as that of the burghers, clergy, and peasants,
who increasingly sought royal protection against the most powerful nobles.
His son Charles XII (ruled 1697-1718) became king at the age of fifteen. He
snatched the crown during his coronation and placed it on his own head, and
never convoked the Estates. Having been instructed only in warfare as a
youth, he remained a headstrong military man who acted by impulse, not
reflection, relying on military force to achieve Swedish ends. Instead of turn­
ing Sweden’s full military attention toward Denmark, which sought to recap­
ture lost provinces from Sweden, he spent five years campaigning against
Russia (see p. 277), a quest that took him into the Ottoman Empire, where
he sought assistance against Russia. But during Charles XII’s reign, the
crown added to its wealth by reclaiming land that had been sold to nobles in
the previous decades. Gradually the Swedish monarchy established a
bureaucracy and increased state revenue. But when Charles XII was killed in
a war in Norway, leaving no heir, the Swedish nobility succeeded in imposing
a parliamentary regime based on the prerogatives of the Estates and marked
by complicated political struggles. In 1772, however, King Gustavus III
(ruled 1771-1792) overthrew the parliamentary system, supported by some
nobles, and reimposed absolute rule, albeit with a new constitution that
reduced the power of the Senate and the Diet. Gustavus III portrayed him­
self as a “patriot king” protecting peasants from avaricious nobles. By then,
however, Sweden’s empire was a fading memory and Gustavus’s aristocratic
enemies organized his assassination in 1792.

Peter the Great Turns Westward

In Western Europe so little was known about “barbaric” Russia that Louis

XIV sent a letter to a tsar who had been dead for twelve years. Peter the

Great (ruled 1682-1725) first imposed order on a state torn by bloody

uprisings; then he created an enormous inland Russian Empire. Whereas

Ivan the Terrible and several of his successors had been turned back by