Swedish Empire
The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The beginning of the Empire is taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, its end as the loss of territories in 1721 following the Great Northern War. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, the empire was controlled for lengthy periods by part of the high nobility, such as the Oxenstierna family, acting as regents for minor monarchs; the interests of the high nobility contrasted with the uniformity policy. In territories acquired during the periods of de facto noble rule, serfdom was not abolished, there was a trend to set up respective estates in Sweden proper; the Great Reduction of 1680 put an end to these efforts of the nobility and required them to return estates once gained from the crown to the king. Serfdom, remained in force in the dominions acquired in the Holy Roman Empire and in Swedish Estonia, where a consequent application of the uniformity policy was hindered by the treaties by which they were gained.
After the victories in the Thirty Years' War, Sweden reached the climax of the great-power era during the Second Northern War, when its primary adversary, was neutralized by the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658. However, in the further course of this war, as well as in the subsequent Scanian War, Sweden was able to maintain her empire only with the support of her closest ally, France. Charles XI of Sweden consolidated the empire, but a decline began with his son, Charles XII. After initial Swedish victories, Charles secured the empire for some time in the Peace of Travendal and the Treaty of Altranstädt, before the disaster that followed the king's war in Russia; the Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava put an end to Sweden's eastbound expansion, by the time of Charles XII's death in 1718 only a much-weakened and far smaller territory remained. The last traces of occupied continental territory vanished during the Napoleonic Wars, Finland went to Russia in 1809. In older Swedish history telling, Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII were heroic warriors.
Sweden emerged as a great European power under King Gustavus Adolphus. As a result of acquiring territories seized from Russia and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as its involvement in the Thirty Years' War, Sweden found itself transformed into the leader of Protestantism. During the Thirty Years' War, Sweden managed to conquer half of the member states of the Holy Roman Empire; the fortunes of war would shift forth several times. After its defeat in the Battle of Nördlingen, confidence in Sweden among the Swedish-controlled German states was damaged, several of the provinces refused further Swedish military support, leaving Sweden with only a couple of northern German provinces. After France intervened on the same side as Sweden, fortunes shifted again; as the war continued, the civilian and military death toll grew, when it was over, it had led to severe depopulation in the German states. Although exact population estimates do not exist, historians estimate that the population of the Holy Roman Empire fell by one-third as a result of the war.
Sweden founded overseas colonies, principally in the New World. New Sweden was founded in the valley of the Delaware River in 1638, Sweden laid claim to a number of Caribbean islands. A string of Swedish forts and trading posts was constructed along the coast of West Africa as well, but these were not designed for Swedish settlers. At the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 granted Sweden territories as war reparations. Sweden demanded Silesia, Pomerania (which had been in its possession since the Treaty of Stettin, a war indemnity of 20,000,000 Riksdaler. Through the efforts of Johan Oxenstierna and Johan Adler Salvius it obtained: Swedish Pomerania, the Swedish share of the former Duchy of Pomerania since the Treaty of Stettin, consisting of Western Pomerania, with the islands of Rügen and Wollin, as well as the towns of Stettin and Stralsund; these German possessions were to be held as fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire. This allowed Sweden a vote in the Imperial Diet and enabled it to "direct" the Lower Saxon Circle alternately with Brandenburg.
France and Sweden, became joint guarantors of the treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor and were entrusted with carrying out its provisions, as enacted by the executive congress of Nuremberg in 1650. After the peaces of Brömsebro and Westphalia, Sweden was the third-largest area of control in Europe by land area, only surpassed by Russia and Spain. Sweden reached its largest territorial extent during this time under the rule of Charles X Gustav after the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658; as a result of eighteen years of war, Sweden gained small and scattered possessions, but had secured control of three principal rivers in northern Germany—the Oder, the Elbe and the Weser—and gained toll-collection rights for those important commercial arteries. Two principal reasons for the small reparations were Queen Christina's impatience; as a result of Sweden's intervention, Swede
Riddarholm Church
Riddarholm Church is the church of a former medieval abbey in Stockholm, Sweden. The church serves as the final resting place of most Swedish monarchs. Riddarholm Church is located on the island of Riddarholmen, close to the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden; the congregation was dissolved in 1807 and today the church is used only for burial and commemorative purposes. Swedish monarchs from Gustavus Adolphus to Gustaf V are entombed here, as well as the earlier monarchs Magnus III and Charles VIII, it has been discontinued as a royal burial site in favor of the Royal Cemetery and today is run by departments of the Swedish Government and Royal Court. It is one of the oldest buildings in Stockholm, parts of it dating to the late-13th century, when it was built as a greyfriars monastery. After the Protestant Reformation, the monastery was closed and the building transformed into a Protestant church. A spire designed by Flemish architect Willem Boy was added during the reign of John III, but it was destroyed by a lightning strike on July 28, 1835 after which it was replaced with the present cast iron spire.
Coats of arms of knights of the Royal Order of the Seraphim are on the walls of the church. When a knight of the Order dies, his coat of arms is hung in the church and when the funeral takes place the church's bells are rung without pause from 12:00 to 13:00. Gamla stan Storkyrkan The Riddarholm Church at the Royal Court's website
Treaty of Nystad
The Treaty of Nystad was the last peace treaty of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. It was concluded between the Tsardom of Russia and the Swedish Empire on 10 September 1721 in the Swedish town of Nystad. Sweden had settled in Frederiksborg. During the war Peter I of Russia had occupied all Swedish possessions on the eastern Baltic coast: Swedish Ingria, Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia, Finland. In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia and Southeast Finland to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule; the Treaty enshrined the rights of the German Baltic nobility within Estonia and Livonia to maintain their financial system, their existing customs border, their self-government, their Lutheran religion, the German language. Nystad manifested the decisive shift in the European balance of power which the war had brought about: the Swedish imperial era had ended. In pre-1917 Saint Petersburg, in the Vyborgsky district one of the thoroughfares was named after the Nystad treaty.
The district houses a church commemorating the first Russian victory in the Great Northern war, the Battle of Poltava – St. Sampsonius' Cathedral. List of treaties Freden i Nystad – Ништадтский мир 1721 – Uudenkaupungin rauha 1721. Trilingual source publication of the documents concerning the peace treaty from The Russian Foreign Ministry Archives. Published by Agricola – The Finnish History Network publication series number 10. 2014
Estonia
Estonia the Republic of Estonia, is a country in North East Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland with Finland on the other side, to the west by the Baltic Sea with Sweden on the other side, to the south by Latvia, to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia; the territory of Estonia consists of a mainland and 2,222 islands in the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of 45,227 km2, water 2,839 km2, land area 42,388 km2, is influenced by a humid continental climate. The official language of the country, Estonian, is the third most spoken Finno-Ugric language; the territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 9,000 B. C. Ancient Estonians were some of the last European pagans to be Christianized, following the Livonian Crusade in the 13th century. After centuries of successive rule by Germans, Swedes and Russians, a distinct Estonian national identity began to emerge in the 19th and early 20th centuries; this culminated in independence from Russia in 1920 after a brief War of Independence at the end of World War I.
Democratic, after the Great Depression Estonia was governed by authoritarian rule since 1934 during the Era of Silence. During World War II, Estonia was contested and occupied by the Soviet Union and Germany being incorporated into the former as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the loss of its de facto independence, Estonia's de jure state continuity was preserved by diplomatic representatives and the government-in-exile. In 1987 the peaceful Singing Revolution began against Soviet rule, resulting in the restoration of de facto independence on 20 August 1991; the sovereign state of Estonia is a democratic unitary parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. Its capital and largest city is Tallinn. With a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union since joining in 2004, the economic monetary Eurozone, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Schengen Area, of the Western military alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
It is a developed country with an advanced, high-income economy, among the fastest-growing in the EU. Estonia ranks high in the Human Development Index, performs favourably in measurements of economic freedom, civil liberties and press freedom. Estonian citizens are provided with universal health care, free education, the longest-paid maternity leave in the OECD. One of the world's most digitally advanced societies, in 2005 Estonia became the first state to hold elections over the Internet, in 2014 the first state to provide e-residency. In the Estonian language the oldest known endonym of the Estonians was maarahvas, meaning "country people" or "people of the soil"; the land inhabited by Estonians was called Maavald meaning "Country Realm" or "Land Realm". One hypothesis regarding the modern name of Estonia derives it from the Aesti, a people described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania; the historic Aesti were Baltic people, whereas the modern Estonians are Finno-Ugric. The geographical areas of the Aesti and of Estonia do not match, with the Aesti living farther south.
Ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to an area called Eistland, as the country is still called in Icelandic, with close parallels to the Danish, Dutch and Norwegian terms Estland for the country. Early Latin and other ancient versions of the name include Hestia. Esthonia was a common alternative English spelling before 1921. Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted; the oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago; the earliest human inhabitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to the Kunda culture, named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, people lived in semi-nomadic communities near bodies of water. Subsistence activities consisted of hunting and fishing. Around 4900 BC appear ceramics of the neolithic period, known as Narva culture.
Starting from around 3200 BC the Corded Ware culture appeared. The Bronze Age started around 1800 BC, saw the establishment of the first hill fort settlements. A transition from hunting-fishing-gathering subsistence to single-farm-based settlement started around 1000 BC, was complete by the beginning of the Iron Age around 500 BC; the large amount of bronze objects indicate the existence of active communication with Scandinavian and Germanic tribes. A more troubled and war-ridden middle Iron Age followed, with external threats appearing from different directions. Several Scandinavian sagas referred to major confrontations with Estonians, notably when Estonians defeated and killed the Swedish king Ingvar. Similar threats appeared in the east. In 1030 Yaroslav the Wise established a fort in modern-day Tartu. Around the 11th century, the Scandinavian Viking era around the Baltic Sea was succeeded by the Baltic Viking era, with seaborne
Queen regnant
A queen regnant is a female monarch, equivalent in rank to a king, who reigns in her own right, as opposed to a queen consort, the wife of a reigning king, or a queen regent, the guardian of a child monarch and reigns temporarily in the child's stead. An empress regnant is a female monarch. A queen regnant possesses and exercises sovereign powers, whereas a queen consort shares her husband's rank and titles, but does not share the sovereignty of her husband; the husband of a queen regnant traditionally does not share his wife's title or sovereignty. However, the concept of a king consort is not unheard of in both classical periods. A queen dowager is the widow of a king. A queen mother is a queen dowager, the mother of a reigning sovereign. In Ancient Africa, Ancient Persia and Pacific cultures, in some European countries, female monarchs have been given the title king or its equivalent, such as pharaoh, when gender is irrelevant to the office, or else have used the masculine form of the word in languages that have grammatical gender as a way to classify nouns.
The Byzantine Empress Irene sometimes called herself basileus,'emperor', rather than basilissa,'empress' and Jadwiga of Poland was crowned as Rex Poloniae, King of Poland. Among the Davidic Monarchs of the Kingdom of Judah, there is mentioned a single queen regnant, though the Hebrew Bible regards her negatively as a usurper; the much Hasmonean Queen Salome Alexandra was popular. Accession of a queen regnant occurs as a nation's order of succession permits. Methods of succession to queendoms, tribal chiefships, such include nomination and ultimogeniture; the scope of succession may be patrilineal, or both. The right of succession may be limited to men only or to women only; the most typical succession in European monarchies from the Late Middle Ages until the late 20th century was male-preference primogeniture: the order of succession ranked the sons of the monarch in order of their birth, followed by the daughters. Many realms forbade succession by women or through a female line in accordance with the Salic law, some still do.
No queen regnant ruled France, for example. Only one woman, Maria Theresa, ruled Austria; as noted in the list below of widely-known ruling queens, many reigned in European monarchies. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and the UK amended their laws of succession to absolute primogeniture. In some cases, the change does not take effect during the lifetimes of people in the line of succession at the time the law was passed. In 2011, the United Kingdom and 15 other Commonwealth realms agreed to remove the rule of male-preference primogeniture. Once the necessary legislation was passed, this means that had Prince William had a daughter first, a younger son would not become heir apparent. In 2015, Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning queen regnant and female head of state in world history. In 2016, she became the longest serving head of state and longest reigning monarch. In China, Wu Zetian became the Chinese empress regnant and established the Zhou Dynasty after dismissing her sons.
The Empress Wu used the title huangdi and in many European sources, is referred to as a female emperor rather than an empress regnant. A few decades earlier in Korea, Queen Seondeok of Silla and Jindeok of Silla developed the term yeowang to refer to themselves, using the title instead of wangbi, translated as "queen consort" and refers to the wife of a king or emperor. Although the Chrysanthemum Throne of Japan is barred to women, this has not always been the case. Again, the Japanese language uses the term josei tennō for the position which would be "empress regnant" in English, with kōgō being the term reserved for an empress consort; the Japanese succession debate became a significant political issue during the early 2000s, as no male children had been born to the Imperial House of Japan since 1965. Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi pledged to present parliament with a bill to allow women to ascend the Imperial Throne, but he withdrew this after the birth of Prince Hisahito in 2006 Queens regnant portal Monarch List of elected and appointed female heads of state and government Order of succession Queen consort Rani Regent Salic law Sultana Women in government Monter, William.
The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800. Yale University Press. P. 271. ISBN 9780300173277.. Media related to Queens regnant at Wikimedia Commons
Sweden
Sweden the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north and Finland to the east, is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund, a strait at the Swedish-Danish border. At 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the largest country in Northern Europe, the third-largest country in the European Union and the fifth largest country in Europe by area. Sweden has a total population of 10.2 million. It has a low population density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre; the highest concentration is in the southern half of the country. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats and Swedes and constituting the sea peoples known as the Norsemen. Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is forested. Sweden is part of the geographical area of Fennoscandia; the climate is in general mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence, that in spite of this still retains warm continental summers.
Today, the sovereign state of Sweden is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state, like its neighbour Norway. The capital city is Stockholm, the most populous city in the country. Legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister. Sweden is a unitary state divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. An independent Swedish state emerged during the early 12th century. After the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century killed about a third of the Scandinavian population, the Hanseatic League threatened Scandinavia's culture and languages; this led to the forming of the Scandinavian Kalmar Union in 1397, which Sweden left in 1523. When Sweden became involved in the Thirty Years War on the Reformist side, an expansion of its territories began and the Swedish Empire was formed; this became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, ending with the annexation of present-day Finland by Russia in 1809.
The last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since Sweden has been at peace, maintaining an official policy of neutrality in foreign affairs; the union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905. Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars and the Cold War, albeit Sweden has since 2009 moved towards cooperation with NATO. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, but declined NATO membership, as well as Eurozone membership following a referendum, it is a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens, it has the world's eleventh-highest per capita income and ranks in numerous metrics of national performance, including quality of life, education, protection of civil liberties, economic competitiveness, equality and human development.
The name Sweden was loaned from Dutch in the 17th century to refer to Sweden as an emerging great power. Before Sweden's imperial expansion, Early Modern English used Swedeland. Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod, which meant "people of the Swedes"; this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige means "realm of the Swedes", excluding the Geats in Götaland. Variations of the name Sweden are used in most languages, with the exception of Danish and Norwegian using Sverige, Faroese Svøríki, Icelandic Svíþjóð, the more notable exception of some Finnic languages where Ruotsi and Rootsi are used, names considered as referring to the people from the coastal areas of Roslagen, who were known as the Rus', through them etymologically related to the English name for Russia; the etymology of Swedes, thus Sweden, is not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning "one's own", referring to one's own Germanic tribe. Sweden's prehistory begins in the Allerød oscillation, a warm period around 12,000 BC, with Late Palaeolithic reindeer-hunting camps of the Bromme culture at the edge of the ice in what is now the country's southernmost province, Scania.
This period was characterised by small bands of hunter-gatherer-fishers using flint technology. Sweden is first described in a written source in Germania by Tacitus in 98 AD. In Germania 44 and 45 he mentions the Swedes as a powerful tribe with ships that had a prow at each end. Which kings ruled these Suiones is unknown, but Norse mythology presents a long line of legendary and semi-legendary kings going back to the last centuries BC; as for literacy in Sweden itself, the runic script was in use among the south Scandinavian elite by at least the 2nd century AD, but all that has come down to the present from the Roman Period is curt inscriptions on artefacts of male names, demonstrating th
Battle of Blenheim
The Battle of Blenheim, fought on 13 August 1704, was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the Grand Alliance. Louis XIV of France sought to knock the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold out of the war by seizing Vienna, the Habsburg capital, gain a favourable peace settlement; the dangers to Vienna were considerable: the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin's forces in Bavaria threatened from the west, Marshal Vendôme's large army in northern Italy posed a serious danger with a potential offensive through the Brenner Pass. Vienna was under pressure from Rákóczi's Hungarian revolt from its eastern approaches. Realising the danger, the Duke of Marlborough resolved to alleviate the peril to Vienna by marching his forces south from Bedburg to help maintain Emperor Leopold within the Grand Alliance. A combination of deception and skilled administration – designed to conceal his true destination from friend and foe alike – enabled Marlborough to march 400 kilometres unhindered from the Low Countries to the River Danube in five weeks.
After securing Donauwörth on the Danube, Marlborough sought to engage the Elector's and Marsin's army before Marshal Tallard could bring reinforcements through the Black Forest. However, with the Franco-Bavarian commanders reluctant to fight until their numbers were deemed sufficient, the Duke enacted a policy of plundering in Bavaria designed to force the issue; the tactic proved unsuccessful, but when Tallard arrived to bolster the Elector's army, Prince Eugene arrived with reinforcements for the Allies, the two armies met on the banks of the Danube in and around the small village of Blindheim, from which the English "Blenheim" is derived. Blenheim was one of the battles that altered the course of the war, which until was leaning for Louis' coalition, ended French plans of knocking the Emperor out of the war. France suffered as many as 38,000 casualties including the commander-in-chief, Marshal Tallard, taken captive to England. Before the 1704 campaign ended, the Allies had taken Landau, the towns of Trier and Trarbach on the Moselle in preparation for the following year's campaign into France itself.
The offensive never materialised as the Grand Alliance's army had to depart the Moselle to defend Liège from a French counteroffensive. The war would rage on for another decade. By 1704, the War of the Spanish Succession was in its fourth year; the previous year had been one of success for France and her allies, most on the Danube, where Marshal Villars and the Elector of Bavaria had created a direct threat to Vienna, the Habsburg capital. Vienna had been saved by dissension between the two commanders, leading to the brilliant Villars being replaced by the less dynamic Marshal Marsin. By 1704, the threat was still real: Rákóczi's Hungarian revolt was threatening the Empire's eastern approaches, Marshal Vendôme's forces threatened an invasion from northern Italy. In the courts of Versailles and Madrid, Vienna's fall was confidently anticipated, an event which would certainly have led to the collapse of the Grand Alliance. To isolate the Danube from any Allied intervention, Marshal Villeroi's 46,000 troops were expected to pin the 70,000 Dutch and English troops around Maastricht in the Low Countries, while General de Coigny protected Alsace against surprise with a further corps.
The only forces available for Vienna's defence were Prince Louis of Baden's force of 36,000 stationed in the Lines of Stollhofen to watch Marshal Tallard at Strasbourg. Both the Imperial Austrian Ambassador in London, Count Wratislaw, the Duke of Marlborough realised the implications of the situation on the Danube; the Dutch, who clung to their troops for their country's protection, were against any adventurous military operation as far south as the Danube and would never willingly permit any major weakening of the forces in the Spanish Netherlands. Marlborough, realising the only way to ignore Dutch wishes was by the use of secrecy and guile, set out to deceive his Dutch allies by pretending to move his troops to the Moselle – a plan approved of by The Hague – but once there, he would slip the Dutch leash and link up with Austrian forces in southern Germany. "My intentions", wrote the Duke from The Hague on 29 April to his governmental confidant, Sidney Godolphin, "are to march with the English to Coblenz and declare that I intend to campaign on the Moselle.
But when I come there, to write to the Dutch States that I think it necessary for the saving of the Empire to march with the troops under my command and to join with those that are in Germany... in order to make measures with Prince Lewis of Baden for the speedy reduction of the Elector of Bavaria." A scarlet caterpillar, upon which all eyes were at once fixed, began to crawl steadfastly day by day across the map of Europe, dragging the whole war with it. – Winston Churchill. Marlborough's march started on 19 May from 32 kilometres north-west of Cologne; the army mortars totalling 21,000 men. This force was to be augmented en route such that by the time Marlborough reached the Danube, it would number 40,000. Whilst Marlborough led his army, General Overkirk would maintain a defensive position in the Dutch Republic in case Villeroi mounted an attack; the Duke had assured the Dutch that if the Frenc
