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During the 17th century, despite having scarcely more than 1 million inhabitants, Sweden emerged to have greater foreign influence, after winning wars against Denmark–Norway, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, and the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. Its contributions during the Thirty Years' War under Gustavus Adolphus helped determine the political, as well as the religious, balance of power in Europe. == Charles IX == (詳細はJohn III of Sweden and brother of Sigismund III Vasa, formally renounced his hereditary right to the throne, Charles IX of Sweden styled himself king. At the Riksdag of the same year, the estates committed themselves irrevocably to Protestantism by excluding Catholics from the succession to the throne, and prohibiting them from holding any office or dignity in Sweden. Henceforth, every Roman Catholic recusant was to be deprived of his estates and banished from the realm. It was in the reign of Charles IX that Sweden became not only a predominantly Protestant, but also a predominantly military monarchy. This change, which was to give a martial colouring to the whole policy of Sweden for the next hundred and twenty years, dates from a decree of the Riksdag of Linköping establishing, at the urgent suggestion of Charles, a regular army; each Province in the country being henceforth liable to provide and maintain a fixed number of infantry and cavalry for the service of the state. Their immediate enemy was Poland, now dynastically as well as territorially linked to Sweden. The struggle took the shape of a contest for the possession of the northern Baltic provinces. Estonia was recovered by the Swedes in 1600, but their determined efforts of 1601–1609 to gain a foothold in Livonia were frustrated by the military ability of the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz. In 1608 hostilities were transferred to Russian territory. At the beginning of that year Charles had concluded an alliance with Tsar Vasili IV of Russia against their common foe, the Polish king; but when, in 1610, Vasili was deposed by his own subjects and the whole tsardom seemed to be on the verge of dissolution, Sweden's policy towards Russia changed its character. Hitherto Charles had aimed at supporting the weaker Slavonic power against the stronger; but now that Russia seemed about to disappear from among the nations of Europe, Swedish statesmen naturally sought some compensation for the expenses of the war before Poland had had time to absorb everything. A beginning was made by the siege and capture of County of Kexholm in Russian Finland March 2, 1611; and on July 16, Great Novgorod was occupied and a convention concluded with the magistrates of that wealthy city whereby Charles IX's second son Philip was to be recognized as tsar, unless in the meantime, relief came to Great Novgorod from Moscow. But now, when everything depended on a concentration of forces, Charles's imprudent assumption of the title of "King of the Lapps of Nordland" which people properly belonged to the Danish Crown, involved him in another war with Denmark, a war known in Scandinavian history as the Kalmar War because the Swedish fortress of Kalmar was the chief theatre of hostilities. Thus the Swedish forces were diverted from their real objective and transferred to another field where even victory would have been comparatively unprofitable. But it was disaster, not victory, which Charles IX of Sweden reaped from this foolhardy enterprise. Still worse, the Kalmar War, prudently concluded by Charles' son, Gustavus Adolphus, in the second year of his reign, by the Treaty of Knäred, January 20, 1613 imposed such onerous pecuniary obligations and such intense suffering upon Sweden as to enkindle into a fire of hatred, which was to burn fiercely for the next two centuries, the long smouldering antagonism between the two sister nations of Scandinavia which dated back to the bloody days of Christian Tyrant. 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「History of Sweden (1611–48)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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