ived this order so early as the summer of
1521, but, instead of complying with it, permitted the escape of many
noblemen, who afterward did homage to Gustavus at Vadstena, in order, as
he expressed it, that they might rather guard their necks like warriors
than be slaughtered like chickens. But in Abo a new massacre was
perpetrated at the beginning of the next year by Lord Thomas, the
royalist commander there, who afterward, in an attempt to relieve
Stockholm, fell, with all his ships, into the hands of Gustavus, and was
hanged upon an oak in Tynnels Island.

After Severin Norby had relieved the capital, the secretary, master
Gotschalk Ericson, wrote thence to Christian that there were but eighty
of the burghers, for the most part Germans, who could be counted on for
the King's service, but of footmen and gunners in the castle there were
now eight hundred fifty men, well furnished with all; the peasants were,
indeed, weary of the war, but were still more fearful of the King's
vengeance, and put faith in no assurances, whence the country could only
be reduced to obedience by violent methods; if a sufficient force were
sent, East-Gothland, Sodermanland, and Upland would submit to the King,
and his grace could then punish the Dalecarlians and Helsingers, who
first stirred up these troubles.

The governor of the castle of Stockholm informs the King, in a report on
military occurrences of the winter, "that his men had compelled him to
consent to an increase of pay on account of the successes they had
gained; that he had expelled from the town, or imprisoned, the suspected
Swedish burghers; that the peasants would rather be hanged on their own
hearths than longer endure the burden of war; that Gustavus, who had in
vain tempted his fidelity, had already sent his plate and the chief part
of his own movable property to a priest in Helsingland; he (the
governor) also transmitted an inventory of the goods of the decapitated
nobles."

But by the end of one month Gustavus, who in this letter is styled "a
forest thief and robber," had again filled three camps around Stockholm
with Dalesmen and Norrlanders; and when, pursuant to a convention with
Lubeck, he received thence in the month of June an auxiliary force of
ten ships, a number that was afterward augmented, he was enabled to
dispense with the greatest portion of his peasants, and retained about
him only those who were young and unmarried. The assistance of the
Lubeckers, it