he said, "or I will spoil the land so
that cock shall not crow nor hound bark in it again forever!"

The frightened peasants fell on their knees and begged for mercy.
He made them give up their leaders, including his former friends,
and they were all put to the sword. After that there was peace in
Dalecarlia.

Gustav Vasa's long reign ended in 1560. Like his enemy, Christian
II, he was a strange mixture of contradictions. He was brave in
battle, wise in council, pious, if not a saint, clean, and merciful
when mercy fitted into his plans. His enemies called him a greedy,
suspicious despot. Greedy he was. More than eleven thousand farms
were confiscated by the crown during his reign, and he left four
thousand farms and a great fortune to his children as his personal
share. But historians have called him "the great housekeeper" who
found waste and loss and left an ordered household. He gave all for
Sweden, and all he had was at her call. It was share and share
alike, in his view. Despotic he could be, too. _L'etat c'est moi_
might have been said by him. But he did not exploit the state; he
built it. He fashioned Sweden out of a bunch of quarrelsome
provincial governments into a hereditary monarchy, as the best
way--indeed, the only way then--of giving it strength and
stability. He was suspicious because everybody had betrayed him, or
had tried to. With all that, his steady purpose was to raise and
enlighten his people and make them keep the peace, if he had to
adopt the Irishman's plan of keeping it himself with an axe. He was
the father of a line of great warriors. Gustav Adolf was his
grandson.

Bent under the burden of years, he bade his people good-by at the
Diet of Stockholm, a few weeks before his death. His old eloquence
rings unimpaired in the farewell. He thanked God, who had chosen him
as His tool to set Sweden free from thralldom. Almost might he liken
himself to King David, whom God from a shepherd had made the leader
of his people. No such hope was in his heart when, forty years
before, he hid in the woods from a bloodthirsty enemy. For what he
had done wrong as king, he asked the people's pardon; it was not
done on purpose. He knew well that many thought him a hard ruler,
but the time would come when they would gladly dig him up from his
grave if they only could. And with that he went out, bowing deeply
to the Diet, the tears streaming down his face.

They saw him no more; but on his tomb the Swedish pe