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Charles IX of Sweden, also Carl ((スウェーデン語:Karl IX); 4 October 1550 – 30 October 1611), was King of Sweden from 1604 until his death. He was the youngest son of King Gustav I of Sweden and his second wife, Margaret Leijonhufvud, brother of Eric XIV and John III, and uncle of Sigismund I/III, king of both Sweden and Poland. By his father's will he got, by way of appanage, the Duchy of Södermanland, which included the provinces of Närke and Värmland; but he did not come into actual possession of them till after the fall of Eric and the succession to the throne of John in 1568. The Swedish kings Eric XIV (1560–68) and Charles IX (1604–1611) took their numbers according to a fictitious History of Sweden. He was actually the third Swedish king called Charles.〔Article (Karl ) in Nordisk familjebok〕 He came into the throne by championing the Protestant cause during the increasingly tense times of religious strife between competing sects of Christianity. In just over a decade, these would break out as the Thirty Years' War. These conflicts had already caused the dynastic squabble rooted in religious freedom that deposed his nephew and brought him to rule as king of Sweden. His reign marked the start of the final chapter (dated 1648 by some) of both the Reformation and Counter-reformation. With his brother's death in November 1592, the throne of Sweden went to his nephew and Habsburg ally, Sigismund of Poland and Sweden. During the tense political times which prevailed, Charles viewed the inheritance of the throne of Protestant Sweden by his devout Roman Catholic nephew with alarm. Thus, several years of religious controversy and discord followed. During the period, he and the Swedish privy council ruled in Sigismund's name while he stayed in Poland. After various preliminaries, the Riksens ständer forced Sigismund to abdicate the throne to Charles IX in 1595. This eventually kicked off nearly seven decades of sporadic warfare as the two lines of the divided House of Vasa both continued to attempt to remake the union between the Polish and Swedish thrones with opposing counter-claims and dynastic wars. Quite likely, the dynastic outcome between Sweden and Poland's house of Vasa exacerbated and radicalized the later actions of Europe's Catholic princes in the German states such as the Edict of Restitution. In fact, it worsened European politics to the abandonment or prevention of settling events by diplomacy and compromise during the vast bloodletting that was the Thirty Years' war. ==Duke Charles== In 1568 he was the real leader of the rebellion against Eric XIV. However, he took no part in the designs of his brother John III against the unhappy king after his deposition. Charles's relations with John were always more or less strained. He had no sympathy with John's High-Church tendencies on the one hand, and he sturdily resisted all the king's endeavours to restrict his authority as Duke of Södermanland on the other. The nobility and the majority of the Riksdag of the Estates supported John. However, in his endeavours to unify the realm, and Charles had consequently (1587) to resign his pretensions to autonomy within his duchy. But, steadfast Calvinist as he was, on the religious question he was immovable. The matter came to a crisis on the death of John III in 1592. The heir to the throne was John's eldest son, Sigismund III Vasa, already king of Poland and a devoted Catholic. The fear that Sigismund might re-catholicize the land alarmed the Protestant majority in Sweden—particularly the commoners and lower nobility, and Charles came forward as their champion, and also as the defender of the Vasa dynasty against foreign interference. It was due entirely to him that Sigismund ''as king-elect'' was forced to confirm the resolutions at the Uppsala Synod in 1593, thereby recognizing the fact that Sweden was essentially a Lutheran Protestant state. Under the agreement, Charles and the Swedish Privy Council shared power and ruled in Sigismund's place since he resided in Poland. In the ensuing years 1593—1595, Charles's task was extraordinarily difficult. He had steadily to oppose Sigismund's reactionary tendencies and directives; he had also to curb the nobility which sought to increase their power at the expense of the absent king, which he did with cruel rigor. Necessity compelled him to work with the clergy and people rather than the gentry; hence it was that the Riksens ständer (Riksdag) assumed under his regency government a power and an importance which it had never possessed before. In 1595, the Riksdag of Söderköping elected Charles regent, and his attempt to force Klas Flemming, governor of Österland (Finland of the day), to submit to his authority, rather than to that of the king, provoked a civil war. Charles sought to increase his power and the king attempted to manage the situation by diplomacy over several years, until fed up, Sigismund got permission from the Commonwealth's legislature to pursue the matters dividing his Swedish subjects, and invaded with a mercenary army. Technically Charles was, without doubt, guilty of high treason, and the considerable minority of all classes which adhered to Sigismund on his landing in Sweden in 1598 indisputably behaved like loyal subjects. In the events that followed, despite some initial successes, Sigismund lost the crucial Battle of Stångebro, and was captured himself, as well as being forced to deliver up certain Swedish noblemen who were named traitor by Charles and the Riksens ständer. With Sigismund defeated and exiled, as both an alien and a heretic to the majority of the Swedish nation, and his formal deposition by the Riksdag of the Estates in 1599 was, in effect, a natural vindication and ''ex post facto legitimization'' of Charles's position all along, for the same session of the Riksens ständer named him as the ruler as regent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles IX of Sweden」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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