ter which he found in it the tyrant
was filled with fear and fury. He sent guards to seize Munk, but when
told that he was not to be found, his terror grew intense. He knew not
where to turn nor what to do. He might have gathered an army of the
peasants, to whom he had just given freedom, to fight the nobles, but
instead he wrote to the lords, abjectly acknowledging his faults and
promising to act differently in the future.

They were not to be won, no one trusting him. Then the terrified tyrant
hurried to Copenhagen and rode round the streets, imploring the citizens
with tears to aid him, confessing his errors and vowing to change his
ways. Many of the people, unused to see a king in tears, were moved by
his petitions, but no wise man trusted him, few came to his assistance,
and the sedition rapidly gained strength.

At length he took a desperate step. In the harbor lay twenty large
warships, which he might have used for defence, but in his terror he
thought only of flight. All the treasure he could lay hands on was
carried to these vessels, even the gilt balls on top of the church spires
being taken. Sigbrit, a detestable favorite, who had given him much evil
counsel and dared not show herself to the enraged people, was carried on
board in a chest and placed among his valuables. He, his wife and
children, and a few faithful servants, followed, and on the 20th of
April, 1523, he set sail from his native land in a passion of grief and
despair. A violent storm scattered his ships, but the one that bore him
reached Antwerp in safety. Sigbrit, who had crept from her trunk, sought
to console him by saying that if he could no longer be king of Denmark he
might at least become burgomaster of Amsterdam.

Thus did this cruel and contemptible coward, who less than three years
before had been unquestioned monarch of all Scandinavia, lose the crown
he was so unfit to wear, and land, a despised fugitive, in a Dutch city,
with but a handful of followers. His fall was thoroughly well deserved,
for it was an immediate consequence of the detestation he had aroused by
his deed of blood in Stockholm, and there was scarce a man in Europe to
pity him in his degradation.

It was a sad thing that the salutary laws he had promulgated in the last
year of his reign came from so evil a source. Frederick was forced by the
nobles to whom he owed his throne to abrogate them, and the code was even
burned as "a dangerous book contrary to good mora