THE SWEDISH CONNECTION 329
Repulsing the Austrians from the gates of Cracow, he rushed to Danzig to escort
the bewildered Sigismund towards his coronation, as Zygmunt III, which took
place on 27 December. In the following year at Byczyna (Pitschen) in Silesia, he
took Maximilian prisoner, and did not release him until Vienna had undertaken
to abandon all pretensions to the Polish throne. From the practical point of
view, Zamoyski's campaign was completely successful. He soon regretted it.
Zygmunt III was the victim of complications beyond his control. As a Swede
by birth, and as grandson of the great Gustav Eriksson, he naturally laid great-
est store on his Swedish inheritance. As a fervent Catholic and pupil of Polish
Jesuits, he understood that Poland could play an important part in the recovery
of Northern Europe for Rome. As the dutiful son of his late Jagiellonian mother,
he listened to the pleas of his aunt Anna, Bathory's widow, who begged him to
accept the Polish throne for her sake. These interests proved quite irreconcil-
able. In Sweden, before sailing for Danzig, he was obliged to sign the Statutes of
Kalmar, which protected the Protestant Church and the Diet from any changes
resulting from the union of crowns. On arrival in Poland, and in spite of his
vocal protests during the ceremony in the Abbey of Oliwa, he was obliged to
swear to the Pacta Conventa and to the terms of the Confederation of Warsaw.
At the Coronation Sejm, he watched with anger while the nobles introduced a
new definition of lese-majeste which expressly excepted all forms of verbal
abuse. Henceforth, he could be, and was, slandered with impunity. He specially
resented the tone of Zamoyski, who had called him 'our dumb phantom
imported from Sweden'. Zamoyski's posturing against the Habsburgs, and his
plans for hedging the monarchy with even stricter limitations, appeared to be
motivated increasingly by private interest. In 1588 in Lithuania, Zygmunt was
obliged to sign the Third Lithuanian Statute, in direct contravention to the
Union of Lublin, but as the necessary price for his acceptance by the magnates
of the Grand Duchy. It is not surprising perhaps that he thought of abdicating
on the spot. In 1589, he bargained with Vienna, seeking to sell his Polish crown
to the Archduke Ernest for 400,000 guilders. He met his father at Reval, and
announced his impending return to Sweden. Yet he could not escape. The
Swedish nobility made it clear that they could well do without him, especially
when he took the Habsburg Archduchess, Anna, for his wife. When John III
died in 1593, Zygmunt was to encounter the same humiliations in Sweden that
he had already borne in Poland.
The disputed Swedish succession produced a ten-year crisis. When Zygmunt
arrived in Stockholm attended by Jesuits and confessors, and by the Nuncio,
Germanico Malaspina, he found that the opposition had stolen a march on him.
The Convocation of the Church of Sweden had already decided in advance to
establish the Augsburg Confession and the Lutheran catechism, and to banish
Calvinism and Zwinglism as heresy. There was no room for a Roman proselyte.
At the Coronation itself, performed by the Protestant Bishop of Stregnas in the
cathedral of Uppsala, there were scenes reminiscent of Henry de Valois's ordeal
in Cracow twenty years before. Zygmunt's uncle, Duke Charles, intervened