" He summoned the peasants to Thing, made a ring around them
of armed men, and gave them their choice:
"Submit now for good and all," 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.
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